Recordkeeping

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In a significant victory for California employers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently reversed a $102 million award against Walmart, in a suit alleging that the retailer violated the California Labor Code’s wage statement and meal-break provisions. Magadia v. Wal-Mart Associates, Inc., 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 16070 (9th Cir. May…

The best defense for employers confronted with claims of “off-the-clock”, (i.e., unrecorded) work under the FLSA are accurate contemporaneous time records created by employees based on clearly communicated time keeping practices. The effectiveness of such records was recently demonstrated in Roberts v. Advocate Health Care, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103631 (N.D.…

Counsel for wage-and-hour plaintiffs often argue – in settlement negotiations and in court – that the plaintiff’s burden under Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 692 (1946), applicable if there are no records of hours worked, renders the employee’s recitation of events unassailable. This position misstates the law, as reflected in…

Employers defending FLSA overtime claims brought by employees are often frustrated when such claims include alleged “off the clock” work despite the fact that the business properly maintained records of hours worked.  A new decision rejects one such allegation.  Gilson v. Indaglo, Inc., 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 20828 (11th Cir. 2014).

The sales employee…

Employees may have an understanding of their own “work week” for various employment purposes based on different business practices or employer scheduling.  However, with respect to calculating hours worked for purposes of determining overtime pay under the FLSA, DOL regulations simply require that an employer designate and use a standard work week for a given…

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the holding of a Texas district court that “an unsubstantiated and speculative estimate of uncompensated overtime does not constitute evidence sufficient to show the amount and extent of that work as a matter of just and reasonable inference.”  Ihegword v. Harris County …

While the FLSA’s “suffer or permit” standard is broad, it is not without limit.  Building on a prior decision, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reviewed several purported justifications for imputing knowledge of alleged additional work asserted by a construction employee and rejected claims of alleged unpaid wages asserted by the former…

As previously noted here, New York Governor David Paterson has signed into law the Wage Theft Prevention Act.  The new law amends the New York Labor Law to create new recordkeeping obligations for employers, as well as significantly greater damages for violations of the Labor Law than previously were available.  

An expanded analysis…