Posts Tagged ‘ California Overtime ’
Week Adjourned: 5.11.12 – Overtime Pay, Smoking Dishwasher, Ormat
May 11th, 2012. By LucyC
Top Class Actions
Holy Catfish Batman!—what’s that smoking thing in the kitchen? A defective dishwasher, perhaps? We’ll find out, as a defective products class action lawsuit has been filed against Whirlpool, the manufacturer of Kitchenaid, Sears Kenmore, Maytag and Whirlpool dishwashers, alleging that certain models of dishwashers have a design flaw that can cause the control circuit board to fail. Greg Adams, who filed the defective dishwasher lawsuit, alleges this happened to him.
Adams claims that on December 8, 2011, he started his dishwasher only to smell burning plastic and see smoke coming from his dishwasher, sometime shortly afterward. To stop the dishwasher, he tried to pull on the door handle, but said he burned his hand on the front panel, which had become extremely hot. In the end, Adams was forced to shut the power off, to prevent further catastrophe, and protect his family. (You know this puts a whole new spin on the benefits of take out.)
According to NBCnews.com, research suggests more than 600 people across the country have come forward on kitchenaid.com. Their products were manufactured by whirlpool, which produces Kitchenaid, Sears Kenmore, Maytag and Whirlpool dishwashers. So why no recall? Well, a recall is one of the things the lawsuit seeks to achieve. Why is this so hard?
Unpaid, unhappy and unafraid… drug sales reps from Medimmune Biologics filed an employment class action lawsuit this week, against the drug company alleging unpaid overtime wage and hour violations. Sound familiar? Novo Nordisk, and Merck are also facing unpaid overtime suits by their sales reps. An industry-wide practice perhaps? Possibly. That is the $65 million question—and hinges on the definitions of ‘exempt’ and ‘non-exempt’.
According to the Medimmune wage and hour class action lawsuit, Medimmune Biologics violated California overtime laws by failing to pay drug sales representatives for overtime hours worked. Under California law, companies are required to pay all non-exempt employees overtime compensation whenever the employees work more than eight hours in a day or forty hours in a week.
The primary requirement to satisfy the outside salesperson exemption and thus not pay overtime under California law and the Fair Labor Standards Act is that the sales representatives are actually making sales. In the Medimmune Biologics overtime class action lawsuit, the drug sales representatives allege that they were not actually involved in making sales but rather promoting prescription drugs to physicians, doctors and other specialists. At most, the physicians the sales representatives promote the drugs to can agree to prescribe the medicine to patients as needed, but cannot actually buy the prescription medicine from the sales representatives directly.
Notably, all the pharma sales rep unpaid overtime class action lawsuits allege that the pharmaceutical sales representatives should be paid overtime compensation for working more than eight hour days under the California Labor Code and/or forty hour weeks under the Fair Labor Standards Act based on the contention that the drug sales representatives do not qualify for the outside salesperson exemption because they are not actually making sales. Incidentally, sales reps who filed unpaid overtime class actions against Schering Plough won.
Top Settlements
Green Energy Co. about to Hand Over Some Green? We have a potential settlement in the Ormat Technologies securities class action this week.
So here’s the not-so-skinny skinny:
To anyone who purchased or otherwise acquired Ormat Technologies Inc securities between May 7 2008 and February 24, 2010, inclusive, who incurred damages (the “class”):
You are hereby notified that this Class Action is pending and that a Settlement of it for Three Million One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($3,100,000) has been proposed. A hearing will be held on October 1, 2012, to determine: (i) whether the Settlement and Plan of Allocation should be approved by the Court as fair, reasonable, adequate, and in the best interests of the Class; (ii) whether Co-Lead Counsel’s application for an award of attorneys’ fees and the reimbursement of expenses should be approved; (iii) whether the Court should grant Lead Plaintiffs reimbursement of their reasonable costs and expenses (including lost wages) directly related to their representation of the Class; and (iv) whether the Court should approve the release of Released Claims against any and all Released Persons and dismiss the Litigation with prejudice.
IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THE CLASS DESCRIBED ABOVE, YOUR RIGHTS WILL BE AFFECTED AND YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO SHARE IN THE SETTLEMENT FUND.
To participate in the Settlement, you must submit a Proof of Claim no later than September 24, 2012. As more fully described in the Notice, the deadline for submitting objections to the Settlement and requests for exclusions from the Class is September 10, 2012. Further information may be obtained by visiting gcginc.com/cases/ormat.
Got that?
Good. See you at the bar. And—Happy Mother’s Day!
Week Adjourned: 6.17.11
June 17th, 2011. By LucyC
Top Class Actions
Logistical Error? Nothing like a lawsuit to improve your company’s standing—or attract quality employees—as FTDI West is about to find out. The company, located in California and Florida, got hit with an unpaid overtime class action lawsuit this week.
The gist of the lawsuit is labor code violations, well, that’s a no-brainer. Specifically, the lawsuit states that FTDI West Inc, violated: Sections 226.7 and 512 of the California Labor Code by failing to provide adequate meal breaks to employees involved, section 226.7 of the California Labor Code by failing to provide adequate rest breaks to employees involved, Section 510 of the California Labor Code by failing to pay proper overtime wages, Sections 203 and 226 (a) of the California Labor code by providing involved employees paystubs not in compliance with California law and not paying “waiting time” penalties, as well as two other causes of action as related to Business and Professions Code Section 17200 and the common law tort of unjust enrichment.
The overtime claims asserted deal with non-payment of “double time” wages. Double time wages are due for any work over 12 hours in a workday or any work beyond eight hours on any seventh consecutive day of a workweek.
The lawsuit defines its class members as “All current and former employees of Defendants who were employed as non-exempt employees at any of Defendants’ locations anywhere in California, at any time from four years prior to the initiation of this action until the present.”
Top Settlements
Drywall Might Settle but the Dust Surely Hasn’t… Remember all the defective Chinese drywall lawsuits of not so very long ago? Well, they are slowly making their way through the courts to settlement land. Case in point—Banner Supply has agreed a $54.4 million settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by homeowners in the Orlando, FL area. In fact, the agreement covers 2,000 to 3,000 homes south of Orlando.
According to Builderonline something like 95 companies have been implicated as distributors of the sulfur-tainted drywall and named in subsequent lawsuits filed against the Chinese manufacturers. The defendants are accused of being the source of tainted drywall. While Banner Supply tops the list, others suppliers reportedly include ProSales L&W Supply, ProBuild, Stock Building Supply, and 84 Lumber.
While $54.5 million might seem a large settlement, it may only work out to between $18,000 and $24,000 per home, and estimates suggest the cost of repairing the affected properties could reach $100,000.
Defective Boat Injury leads to $31M Award. Ok. There’s bad design, and BAD DESIGN. In this case, I’m not talking about an infraction of the Home & Garden variety, but rather something that warranted a $31 million award. Two women brought a defective product and personal liability lawsuit against MasterCraft, after suffering some pretty horrendous injuries that good design likely would have prevented.
Short version, in 2006 Nichollette Bell and Bethany Wallenburg were among 12 passengers riding in a MasterCraft X-45 wakeboarding craft. They were sitting on the bow of the boat when it was suddenly submerged as the driver of the boat went to retrieve a fallen wakeboarder. As a result the women were swept off the boat by the force of water and into the lake. The boat’s propeller struck Bell on the head, ripping out an eye and leaving her with brain damage. The propeller also slashed Wallenburg’s left elbow and lower back, resulting in muscle and nerve damage. In their lawsuit, the women alleged the boat was defectively designed. They also alleged the driver handled the boat negligently. Not surprisingly, the jury found MasterCraft 80 percent at fault and the driver 20 percent at fault.
OK. That’s it for this week. See you at the Bar.
Week Adjourned: 5.14.10
May 14th, 2010. By LucyC
This week it’s all about bad employers and bad drugs…bad, bad, bad!
Top Class Actions
Whole New Meaning to Visitation Rights. A massive, nationwide class action lawsuit was filed this week by employees of one the largest healthcare service providers in the country—Gentiva Health Services, Inc. The employees are claiming the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Apparently, Gentiva—which incidentally employs some 30,000 health care workers—treats visiting nurses and other health care providers as exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA and refuses to pay these employees for all hours worked. Sound familiar?
Instead, Gentiva pays nurses and other health care providers on a “per visit” basis for some work, an hourly rate for other work, and fails to pay anything at all for other hours worked. Plaintiffs allege that Gentiva’s rather creative take on employee compensation doesn’t quite meet the requirements of state or federal wage and hour law.
The lawsuit, if approved, seeks to represent all current and former Gentiva employees, including registered nurses, therapists, and other health care providers who are or were not paid for all hours worked.
You know these guys may end up rivalling Wal-Mart….
Top Settlements
Movin’ from Price to Wage Rollbacks? (Again?) Speaking of the devil…(I feel a rant coming on)… Read the rest of this entry »
Study says LA surpasses NYC, Chicago in Wage Theft
March 8th, 2010. By AbiK
Every so often there’s a little news story out there that doesn’t get as much attention as it perhaps should. Take a story by Max Taves at LAWeekly.com not long ago. The headline: Unscrupulous Employers Skim $26.2 Million. Ok, surprise, surprise. But the real headline hits you when you read the subhead: That’s per week, from lower-income Angeleno’s paychecks.
$26.2 million per week? Rack that one up on an annual basis and now you’re talking over $1 billion in alleged wage theft.
Taves’ article (2/18/10) is based on a study co-authored by UCLA sociologist, Ruth Milkman, and Victor Narro. The 69-page study, Wage Theft and Workplace Violations in Los Angeles, concludes that 17% of LA county’s poorest workers are basically ripped off to the tune of $26.2 million each week—money they never see in their paychecks. Money that they should see in the form of minimum wage pay, overtime pay for time-and-a-half overtime worked, and rest and meal breaks. The reason, the authors argue, is that employers in LA county “know there’s no enforcement.”
What’s interesting in this study—aside from the sheer numbers involved—is that when the authors compared LA to those in NYC or Chicago, they found that LA low-wage workers were more likely to be Read the rest of this entry »
California Overtime at the Car Wash: Are Inspection Numbers for Real?
November 2nd, 2009. By AbiK
By now you’ve read the news about the California Labor Commissioner imposing close to $1 million in fines after a statewide investigation of the California carwash industry.
The investigation went as follows:
42 investigators
did
230 car wash inspections
netting
141 citations
for
103 car wash businesses
The citations issued total $916,711.
Ok, great. There’s some progress. But here’s the part I’m having a hard time swallowing (as reported at Reuters; the bold is mine)…
Investigators found 49 businesses that failed to provide workers’ compensation coverage for their employees. Citations issued totaled $240,000 and businesses without workers’ compensation Read the rest of this entry »
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