suffer or permit

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Overtime claims based on alleged “off the clock” work often turn on the question of whether the employer has “suffered or permitted” the employee to work uncompensated hours in excess of forty in the workweek. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has affirmed a Mississippi district court’s finding that an employer…

Time spent by employees in meal and other breaks continues to prompt litigation against public and private sector employers. In a recent decision, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that corrections officers at a Pennsylvania prison failed to allege a violation of the FLSA by challenging the County’s failure to compensate them…

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…

Joining a decision issued last fall by Southern District of New York Judge Andrew Carter, Judge Ronnie Abrams has also ruled that time spent by New York City employees in alcohol counseling required by their job did not constitute “work.”  Gibbs v. City of New York, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7960 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 23,…

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…

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…

Letting stand a decision of the Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit, the Supreme Court has denied review of an emergency room nurse’s claim for overtime based on work allegedly performed during unpaid meal breaks. White v. Baptist Mem’l Health Care Corp., U.S., No. 13-107, cert. denied 10/7/13. Plaintiff urged the Supreme Court to…