I love this one. For the title of the worker classification involved. It appears that a class of drilling fluid specialists, commonly referred to as “mud men,” has reached a $7 million settlement in its wage and hour suit against M-I LLC. The case is entitled Syed et al. v. M-I LLC and was filed
Employers may make deductions for uniforms under the Fair Labor Standards Act but such deductions cannot take their wage rates under the minimum. Life Time Fitness just learned this truism. The gym chain has agreed to pay in excess of $976,000 in back wages and damages to almost 16,000 employees whose wages fell below the
A group of New Jersey sales associates who work in Dish Network LLC call centers urged a federal court to confirm a $1.9 million arbitration award stemming from a proposed class action, in which the workers said the satellite television provider miscalculated their overtime pay rates. The case is entitled Frisari v. Dish Network LLC,
Whenever a FLSA suit is lodged against a unionized employer, I always look for the possibility of a preemption defense, which will, in one fell swoop, doom the entire litigation. If the Court finds that the matter is governed by the parties’ labor contract and is better and properly left for the arbitration (or NLRB)
The TSheets Time Tracking Blog recently posted a quiz testing readers’ knowledge of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). It was a pleasure to assist in preparing the 9-question quiz, asking participants to correctly apply the FLSA to several hypothetical situations. Can you get
A Texas federal court handed a quick win Wednesday to a class of trainers claiming Gold’s Gym unfairly denied them overtime, ruling their pay did not comprise “bona fide commissions” under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The case is entitled Casanova et al. v.
Here is another exemption misclassification lawsuit, but this time coming from a different angle. This time, it is a group of human resources employees who work for Lowe’s have filed a putative class action on the theory that they were misclassified as managers and are thus entitled to overtime. This is very dangerous because the
In most (if not all) FLSA cases I handle, whether single plaintiff or collective action, there is usually a State of New Jersey cause of action set forth as Count II, with the FLSA Count as the first one. The New Jersey Count is duplicative of the federal count to the extent that people (ultimately)
In November we reported on Wigdor v SoulCycle, which had been filed in New York Supreme Court, New York County. In that action a well-known plaintiff’s attorney, Douglas Wigdor, alleged that SoulCycle retaliated against him by banning him from the Company’s establishments because Wigdor had filed a putative wage and hour class action against
It is no secret that most FLSA class action lawsuits settle. The costs of litigation, the fee shifting nature of the statute, plus the fact that oftentimes the merits/defenses are not that clear (or good) for the employer militate settlements being made. However, that is not the end of the story because the settlement then