Supreme Court Declines Review of $35.6 Million Verdict Against Family Dollar for Unpaid Overtime
This week the Supreme Court denied writ of certiorari in Morgan v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc., thereby allowing the 2006 jury verdict in favor of 1,424 store managers for unpaid overtime to stand. Among the issues raised on appeal was whether store managers were correctly classified as exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The plaintiffs, current and former store managers, alleged that Family Dollar failed to pay its store managers overtime in violation of the FLSA. Family Dollar claimed that as store managers, the employees were exempt from overtime pay. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding that the store managers were misclassified as exempt since they spent 80-90% of their time performing non-managerial tasks such as stocking shelves, running cash registers, unloading trucks, and performing janitorial duties. The store managers were managers in title only and therefore not exempt from overtime wages prescribed under the FLSA.
The Eleventh Circuit also held that the district court was within its discretion in denying Family Dollar’s motions to decertify the plaintiffs’ class action status because the court carefully followed the two-stage process for evaluating a collective action and found that the evidence demonstrated that the 1,424 managers in the class were similarly situated in at least 14 key areas.
That the Supreme Court denied review is important to potential plaintiffs in unpaid overtime class action suits. It lets stand the important lenient standard for initial certifications of class action status and ensures that employers cannot take advantage of employees by granting them a greater title than their position deserves. This protects employees from being deprived of the important rights granted to them under the FLSA.
For more information on the FLSA and The Employment Law Group® law firm’s Overtime Practice, click here.
