The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals court has concluded that a lower court’s dismissal of a collective action filed by accountants was legally proper on the basis that the Company did not misclassify these accountants as exempt.  In an area of wage-hour law that is rife with all manner of shades of gray, this is a great victory for this employer and employers in general.
The case is entitled Bell v. Callaway Partners LLC, in the U.S. Court of appeals for the Eleventh Circuit; the case had been filed in the North District of Georgia.

The opinion recited that “the class of plaintiffs in this lawsuit are highly educated accountants and certified public accountants who, during their employment with Callaway, often made more than $100,000 a year and thus they fall under the overtime exemption.”  The plaintiffs had evidently tried to contend that they were not “salaried” as the federal regulations demand, so it did not matter whether or not they performed “professional duties.”  This would be the only tactic open to them, especially if they were more than “staff accountants” or “junior accountants.”

As a component of their attack on the salary issue, the plaintiffs asserted that the Company paid out bonuses and paid them for work performed on weekends in a manner that transgressed against the salary basis test.  If they succeeded in showing they were not salaried, it would not matter whether they performed professional duties 100% of the time because, by definition, they would be non-exempt.

The plaintiffs charged that they were not paid by a salary basis, as the bonuses they received were reduced if they worked less than eight hours in a single weekday.  However, if they were paid a minimum fixed amount of at least $455 per week, the federal minimum, they are still considered salaried.  The Eleventh Circuit noted this, finding that “because there was a nondeductible minimum weekly salary, Callaway was free to structure any bonus program as it saw fit.”

This is the danger of an attack based on lack of a salary basis—if the employer is wrong, there is no defense and the plaintiff(s) win because it is of no avail or legal relevance that the work performed was “exempt” or “professional.”  The FLSA makes a few minor exceptions to this otherwise inviolate requirement to pay “white collar” employees a salary in order to seek to claim the exemption (i.e. doctors, lawyers), but if employers pay in any method other than a salary, the exemption is automatically lost for the employee or class of employees and then significant liability may result.