18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

168 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition theory, and therefore it declined to address Defendants’ arguments. For these reasons, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a collective action. McCoy, et al. v. Elkhart Products Corp. , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26069 (W.D. Ark. Feb. 11, 2021). Plaintiff, an hourly-paid production worker, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant failed to pay for pre-shift and post-shift work completed when off-the-clock in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the Court granted in part. Plaintiff sought conditional certification of a collective action of all hourly-paid production facility employees who worked for Defendant at any time on or after October 1, 2017. In support of her motion, Plaintiff submitted her own affidavit, in which she attested that she was aware of others similarly-situated who were paid in the same manner as she was paid. Defendant argued that Plaintiff failed to show employees at its facility in Indiana were similarly-situated to her or others at the facility in Arkansas. Plaintiff contended that Defendant utilized uniform standard pay policies to which all employees at all locations were subject, and all of which violated the FLSA. The Court, however, agreed with Defendant that Plaintiff failed to present sufficient evidence that hourly employees at the Indiana location were similarly-situated based on her personal knowledge. Id . at *7. The Court found that Plaintiff’s affidavit attested that she had conversations with other employees regarding their pay, which was sufficient to demonstrate a similarly-situated group of workers in the location where Plaintiff worked. Id . at *8. However, the Court determined that Plaintiff failed to establish that employees at Defendant’s Indiana facility were paid in the same manner or subject to the same policies and procedures as the Arkansas facility. The Court thus granted Plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification with a modification to the scope of the collective action so that it included only those employees working at the Arkansas warehouse location. Mosley, et al. v. Hydrostatic Oil Tools, Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 137313 (W.D. Ark. July 23, 2021). Plaintiff, an exempt delivery driver, filed a collective action alleging that Defendants misclassified him and others similarly-situated as exempt and thereby failed to pay them overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the Court denied. On April 22, 2019, prior to Plaintiff instituting this lawsuit, a similar lawsuit alleging substantially the same allegations was filed in the same Court as Attaway, et al. v. Hydrostatic Oil Tools, Inc., Case No. 19-CV-1015 (W.D. Ark. 2019). The Court had granted the motion for conditional certification of a collective action in Attaway for a group of delivery driver employees who worked for Defendant from April 22, 2016, through the date of judgment. Id . at *3. Defendants argued that the Court could not grant conditional certification in Plaintiff’s action pursuant to the first- to-file rule. Defendants asserted that because Attaway was still pending and was identical in nature to Plaintiff’s case, a collective action in Plaintiff’s case should not be certified. Plaintiff argued that the conditionally certified collective action in Attaway did not include all of putative Plaintiffs included in Plaintiff’s proposed collective action. The Court agreed with Defendants’ position. It reasoned that in allowing duplicative collective actions to proceed, the Court would risk confusion of current collective members in Attaway and potential collective members in Plaintiff’s case regarding their legal options. Id . at *4. The Court thus found that conditionally certifying another FLSA collective action while one nearly identical certified collective action was pending in the Court would not be appropriate. Accordingly, the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion. O ’ Reilly, et al. v. Daugherty Systems, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 188725 (E.D. Mo. Sept. 30, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of female employees, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant paid female employees less than comparable male employees in violation of the FLSA. The Court previously had granted Plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a collective action. After discovery, Defendant subsequently filed a motion to decertify the collective action, and the Court granted the motion. Defendant provided evidence demonstrating that compensation decisions occurred at the local level by branch managers. Plaintiffs worked in either Department Code 003, 007, or 110, and each department has a distinct compensation structure. Id . at *18. Compensation for employees in Department 003 was composed of a base salary, commission, and a discretionary bonus in some cases, Department 007 was composed of a base salary and incentive compensation based on the employee’s individual performance as well as the performance of their business unit, and Department 110 employees received a base salary, with a possibility of a small discretionary bonus if they reach a leadership position within their line of service. Id. at *10. The Court determined that the evidence did not support a finding of a single, FLSA-violating policy because Defendant did not impose a top-down compensation structure. The Court also held that the evidence suggested that Plaintiffs’ compensation was determined by their supervisors in