The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) is a federal law that, among other things, prohibits employers from failing to pay overtime to its employees and attempting to avoid paying overtime by classifying employees as “salaried” who should, by law, actually be paid for each hour worked. For such employees, time worked over forty hours must be compensated at time and a half. Minnesota also has a version of the the FLSA under its own state laws.
On February 18, Madia Law filed a class and collective action lawsuit in federal court against Regency Beauty Institute (a national for-profit cosmetology school) on behalf of employees in Regency’s admissions department who were: (1) initially misclassified as “salaried” employees, (2) were not paid for time worked over forty hours during the misclassification period, and (3) after they were properly classified as “hourly” employees, were required to work off the clock so Regency could avoid paying them overtime wages.
After a two week trial, a Carver County jury awarded Madia law client Dr. Sam Deweese nearly $1.3M in damages from his former clinic.
Dr. Deweese worked as a family practice physician for nearly twenty years at his clinic and earned high praise from his patients. He devoted his entire working life to the institution, committed himself to a high standard of excellence in his profession, and committed a large capital contribution in order to secure his partnership. Dr. Deweese alleged that his clinic’s relationship with him changed after he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in summer 2007.
Madia Law represented “Laura” – a physician’s assistant who was hired by a medical clinic that found Laura through a recruiting agency. After hiring Laura, the clinic began making deductions from her checks to cover the “recruitment fee” that it paid the agency to find Laura. In total, the clinic deducted close to $30,000 from Laura’s wages to recover its recruitment costs.
Sanders v. Lee County School District, No. 10-3240 (8th Cir. 2012). An Arkansas jury found in favor of plaintiff Sharon Sanders on her Title VII claims of race discrimination and constructive discharge. The jury awarded $10,000 in compensatory damages for race discrimination, $60,825 in back and front pay damages for her constructive discharge, and $8,000 in punitive damages. After the verdict, the district court judge granted the School District’s motion under Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to set aside the jury’s verdicts on constructive discharge and punitive damages. Sanders appealed the district court’s vacation of the jury’s verdicts to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals – the Eighth Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling and reinstated the jury’s findings.
Congress passed the LLFPA to reverse the Supreme Court’s 2007 holding in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Inc. In that case, Justice Alito led a 5-4 majority in concluding that Ledbetter could not sue Goodyear under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for gender based pay discrimination that she had experienced for almost twenty years because she did not file her charge within six months of the original decision (made decades earlier) to pay her less than her male counterparts.
On Friday, Madia Law also filed a motion for conditional class certification, which United States District Court Judge Donovan Frank will hear in early June. The following includes a summary of the allegations contained in the filings.
