On March 24, 2010, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland Judge Deborah Chasanow denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss in Randolph v. ADT Sec. Servs., Inc..  This case presented an important question of first impression for the Fourth Circuit, namely whether employees, who were compensated with commissions based on sales, could complain to a state wage and hour board and be protected under the anti-retaliation provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 215(a)(3) even if they were not entitled to overtime if they held a reasonable, good faith belief that they had been misclassified as commissions based employees and that they had been inadequately compensated for overtime work performed for the defendant. 

Plaintiffs Sharon Randolph and Tami Thompson filed a complaint with the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (DLLR), claiming that ADT failed to pay them overtime.  Randolph and Thompson were paid in commission for sales, however they thought they should have been compensated on an hourly basis and that they were entitled to overtime.  After being notified of the complaint, ADT terminated Randolph and Thompson for violating company policy by disclosing confidential information to the DLLR.  After their termination, the plaintiffs filed the present suit asserting that ADT violated the FLSA’s prohibition against retaliation and that their termination was wrongful under the Maryland public policy exception to at-will employment, known as an Adler tort claim. 

Relying in part on the only U.S. court of appeals case to address the application of § 215(a)(3) to state law, Sapperstein v. Hager, 188 F.3d 852 (7th Cir. 1999), Judge Chasanow sided with the plaintiffs and will allow the case to go to trial.  A copy of the Memorandum Opinion and Order is available here.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Fair Labor Standards Act, The Employment Law Group® Law Firm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.