18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

384 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition it did not pay her overtime compensation. Therefore, the Appeals Court rendered judgment in Defendant’s favor by affirming the trial court’s grant of summary judgment. (viii) Minnesota Hagen, et al. v. Steven Scott Management, 2021 Minn. LEXIS 420 (Minn. Aug. 7, 2021). Plaintiff, an onsite property caretaker at an apartment complex, filed a class action alleging that Defendant’s use of rent credits to pay her wages and failure to pay for on-call time violated the Minnesota Fair Labor Standards Act ("MFLSA"). Following discovery, the trial court granted Defendant’s motion for summary judgment. On appeal, the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s ruling. The Minnesota Supreme Court thereafter granted Plaintiff’s petition for review, and it affirmed in part and reversed in part the Court of Appeals’ holding. The Supreme Court looked to whether rent credits qualified as "wages" under the MFLSA. Id . at *9. The Supreme Court found that the statute was unambiguous and that rent credits qualified as wages under the MFLSA. Therefore, because rent credits paid in accordance with the lodging allowance rule qualified as wages under the MFLSA and the undisputed facts showed that Defendant complied with that rule, the Supreme Court held that the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment to Defendant. Plaintiff further argued that the trial court erred in finding that Defendant was not required to pay her for every hour she was on-call, even if she was not actively responding to a tenant’s call for assistance or performing other work-related tasks. Id. at *21. The Supreme Court reasoned that under the plain language of § 177.23, the phrases "performing any duties of employment" and "available to perform duties of employment" created ambiguity in the statute. Id . at *22. The Supreme Court explained that whether Defendant’s particular on-call restrictions made it so that Plaintiff could not use her time effectively for her own purposes was a factual analysis that could not be resolved by the trial court at the summary judgment stage. The Supreme Court opined that Plaintiff’s affidavit outlined how Defendant’s on-call restrictions limited the extent of the activities she could do while on-call. Accordingly, the Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the Court of Appeals’ ruling that had affirmed the trial court’s order granting Defendant’s motion for summary judgment. (ix) Nevada Myers, et al. v. Reno Cab Co., 2021 Nev. LEXIS 39 (Nev. July 29, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of taxi cab drivers, brought two putative wage & hour class actions alleging minimum wage violations pursuant to the Minimum Wage Amendment to the Nevada Constitution (“MWA”) as well as claims for waiting time penalties under NRS 608.040. Defendants leased the taxi cabs to the drivers and the lease agreement was approved by the Nevada Transportation Authority (“NTA”) as required by statute. The lease required that the drivers operate the taxicab for at least three days per week and pay to the leasing company a nominal fee, one-half of the driver’s gross earnings for the day, plus gas and administrative fees. Plaintiffs alleged that their take-home pay was often less than the minimum hourly wage required by the MWA that only applies to “employees” and also that they were not paid all the wages they were owed at the time of separation. Defendants moved for summary judgment on the basis that the drivers were independent contractors, not employees, and therefore the drivers were not covered under the MWA and § 608.040. The trial court granted Defendants’ motion relying solely on the fact that the drivers held NTA-approved taxicab leases and reasoning that when the NTA approved a lease, it confirmed that the parties to the lease had created independent contractor relationship. On Plaintiffs’ consolidated appeals, the Supreme Court of Nevada reversed the trial court’s judgment. The Supreme Court held that Plaintiffs’ employee status for purposes of the MWA was determined only by the "economic realities test.” Id . at *9. However, as to the statutory claims for waiting time penalties, the Supreme Court held that Defendants could establish the drivers were independent contractors not subject to NRS Chapter 608 by showing either: (i) that the driver was an independent contractor under the” economic realities test,” or (ii) that the driver was an independent contractor under § 608.0155. The Supreme Court also held that NTA’s approval of a driver’s lease pursuant to § 706.473 did not render the drivers independent contractors for purposes of the MWA. As such, the Supreme Court held that the trial court erroneously granted summary judgment in favor of Defendant on the basis of the NTA’s approval of the drivers’ leases. Finally, because both the economic realities test and the § 608.0155 test may be fact-intensive, and the trial court expressly found that certain material facts were disputed, the Supreme Court did not decide it the employment status of the drivers as a matter of law. At dispute was the extent of the drivers’ control over their own work schedules, the extent of their control over which fares to pick up, whether they were in fact free to hire substitute drivers, and whether they were in fact free to work