18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

304 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition *7-8. The Fifth Circuit noted that commuting would only be compensable when the commute was connected to the employees’ specific work obligations. Id . at *14. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the District Court that Plaintiffs failed to allege that they were working while commuting or that the commute was intertwined with their welding and pipefitting duties. Id . at *14-15. Further, the Fifth Circuit held that it need not address whether or not the FLSA preempted the LWPA claims because Plaintiffs failed to state a claim cognizable under the LWPA. The Fifth Circuit opined that Plaintiffs conceded that no "express agreement” existed in which Defendants promised compensation for commute time. Id . at *15. Further, Plaintiffs offered no evidence or allegation of an internal policy or normal practice that mandated that employees would be compensated for any travel time. For these reasons, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s ruling granting Defendants’ motion to dismiss. Then, et al. v. Great Arrow Builders, LLC, 513 F. Supp. 3d 633 (W.D. Penn. 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of construction employees, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant failed to pay overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (“PMWA”). Defendant filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), which the Court denied. Plaintiffs specifically alleged that Defendant required construction employees to park their personal vehicles at a company parking lot before boarding company- owned busses to be driven to their job site each day. Id . at 634. At the end of the workday, the buses brought workers back to the parking lot. Plaintiffs contended that Defendant failed to include the travel time from the company-controlled parking lot to the job site in its computation of the hours worked by each employee for purposes of wages and overtime. Id . at 634-35. Defendant argued that the travel time claim under the PMWA should be dismissed because it was "conflict preempted" by the FLSA because the PMWA was “less generous than the FLSA with regard to travel-time claims." Id . at 635. Plaintiffs contended the more recent persuasive authority from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit explicitly disagreed by noting that "the PMWA requires compensation for a broader range of activities, including travel time, than the FLSA." Id . Accordingly, Plaintiff alleged that Defendant failed to establish that the affirmative defense of preemption was clear on the face of the complaint and therefore dismissal was not appropriate. The Court held that preemption was an affirmative defense that must be clear on the face of the complaint for a 12(b)(6) motion to succeed. The Court noted that the FLSA’s "integral and indispensable" standard was different than the PMWA’s requirement that travel time be "part of the duties of the employee during normal working hours." Id . at 635. The Court concluded that there are situations where travel time would be considered compensable under the FLSA that would not be under the PMWA, and the opposite was also true. The Court thus held that the compensability of the travel time at issue under either the PMWA or FLSA was a fact-specific inquiry, and Defendant failed to show that the travel time protections under the PMWA were less generous than those found under the FLSA. Id . at 636. For these reasons, the Court denied Defendant’s motion to dismiss. (xxxviii) Trials In Wage & Hour Class And Collective Actions Nwauzor, et al. v. Geo Group, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 235308 (W.D. Wash. Dec. 8, 2021). Plaintiffs in consolidated class actions alleged that Defendant failed to pay immigration detainee workers in its Voluntary Work Program the applicable minimum wage at its Northwest Detention Center, now renamed as the Northwest ICE Processing Center. Following a trial, a jury found in favor of Plaintiffs and awarded damages under the Washington Minimum Wage Act (“WMWA”) of over $17 million. The Court entered judgment in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendant and awarded the amount determined by the jury. Defendant thereafter filed a motion for remittitur as to the damages award. The Court denied the motion. Defendant argued that a reduction of the award to no more than $13,646,928.32 was warranted by the evidence produced at trial. The Court rejected Defendant’s argument. The Court determined that the evidence presented at trial supported the jury’s award of damages even though it was higher than that requested by Plaintiffs’ counsel in closing argument. Id . at *3. The Court noted that the jury instructions permitted the jury to precisely compute the amount of Plaintiffs’ damages, and the evidence at trial showed that Defendant recorded the days each detainee worked and provided the minimum wage in Washington for the relevant years. Id . The Court held that the jury award was not "grossly excessive or monstrous" considering all the evidence in the record and was supported by credible evidence in the record. Id . at *4. For these reasons, the Court denied Defendant’s motion for remittitur.