you can be held liable for unpaid wages the family ever standards act tells us that many people can actually be liable for unpaid wages possibly even employers and multiple individuals  employer the precise language is an employer is any person acting directly or indirectly in the interests of an employer and as founded twenty nine u s c two zero zero three d and so in this case when we're trying to decide whether or not mr billow was an individual employer duplantis it's important to remember that brett in the statute because that's where it all comes back to  the ninth circuit only has two cases on individual employer liability and both of those cases have used the the net test as a test for determining what the economic reality of the  as i read it it says includes any person acting directly or indirectly directly in the interest of an employer you said that much but you did not say in relation to an employee well it isn't even in relation to an employee rather significant and if you're the president of the company with five thousand employees and two of those five thousand bring a case you never met them you had nothing to do with him you never hired him you never fired him isn't there an issue with respect to whether the him the president is acting in relation to an employee i don't  because there's no question that the plaintiffs in this case were employees for example they were independent contractors and because that's not the issue the issue is whether mr fellow is a employer or within the meaning of that statute your honor i believe that it's still not a problem because as the beginning part of the question at the beginning part of the sentence says any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer to an employee so no elation to an employee as you seem to be resisting the words in relation to i'm sorry or on what is the relation between mr billow and the plaintiffs in this case  say too but you're not responding to my concern about whether you have stablished that mr bell was acting in relation to these employees whom he never met never hired never fired true again i believe he was acting in to in directly in the interest of the employer in relation to the employee well that's just a statement i'm saying what is the evidence that he in fact acted in relation to these two employee the evidence is that the economic reality of the situation shows that he was in control of their employment well he can now make reality is a very very big concept was the evidence that he was in control of these two employees it is a very vague concept but that is the test that the circuit uses to show the relationship between employer and employee and the facts that show the economic reality of the situation is that he was the sole employer he scuse me he was  owner he had one hundred percent ownership interest in the company no one else did he was the president secretary treasurer of the corporation he was all of that there's no there's no controversy was specter that my focus  in what's giving me some concern is what was his connection even indirectly what was his connection to these two employees his connection is that by virtue of the fact that he was the one person with ultimate responsibility over this company that any decision that different is that in other corporations power can be divided among various individuals for example there could be a vice president marketing whose duty it is to take care of marketing and nothing else and with no person yes they make business judgments all the time some which are good some of which are bad some time out poorly some which you know sometimes they may think it's appropriate to take the company into bankruptcy or to take the company public or pick company private and all those things have consequences for for the employees just like you do for the stockholders and consumers and i'm just not sure how you differentiate  influence on a decision you're still indirectly responsible that's true so let's see also you know if you have two of us of let's say there were two people responsible as it was a two person corporation and between the two of them they did exactly all the things  many circuits have have expressed over time this is always going to be very fact intensive test and is always dependent on the totality of the circumstances so while a more difficult decision employees could be many laos removed i disagree that it would go to the jury because it's a factual question what each person did in the corporation and then the judge would determine whether or  difficulty with your case and i don't understand the argument you made but for now as far as getting to the what i consider the nerve root of the case so i'm being critical with that front so you'll know the district judge took a look at the economic realities and then he looked at the factors that we've established in lambert but he made a mistake looking at the factors on page four of opinion he said he pointed out the power to hire and fire employees that's one of those power but then when he makes his finding he says no one hired or bellow didn't hire or fire anybody and that's been overlooked i think in your analysis that if you get into the actual economic realities and you get to the factor test it talks about the power to hire and fire but the district judge never got to the issue of whether or not he had power to hire and fire but he only talked about whether in fact he hired and fired these two individuals and the record indicates that he does have that power when he needed to have it he had the workman's compensation  where he worked it out as the present the company by terminating the employment of his people and then employing him switching him to a different company so he had the power now you don't even mention that in your argument and yet it seems to me that's the crux of the whole case and now obviously you've studied the case and i must be off on the wrong issue here in my hand alice's case so why don't you tell me why it is that you did not you obviously didn't have this analysis in mind as appropriate and i want to know why it isn't appropriate here i think you are one hundred percent correct why didn't you tell us about that the beginning the district judge made a mistake it's that is one of the mistakes of the district judge made is the reason you mistake you don't have anything else in your case the reason the district judge made that mistake is because later in the decision the district judge said that there could be an if or inference that mr bello had the power to hire and fire but that the district court was not willing to make that inference because we had only shown that mr bell did not hire or fire any of my plaintiffs the district court thought that it would be an inference to infer that he had the power to hire and fire whereas he stated i didn't read that in his opinion already booted up i have the opinion right in front of me i'm just looking for it here we go on page five of the decision line eleven finally in his deposition defendant bill repeatedly said that while design hard the pointis defendant below never stated that he  hired or fired any of the plaintiffs all the understated evidence demonstrates that neither defendant eleanor huntington hired or fired any of the plaintiffs and then there's a citation to grey with a quotation the cases do not suggest however that merely being an officer or shareholder subjects an individual to phillis a liability a status dazed inference of control cannot alone suffice to create a genuine issue of fact whether defendant had to have power to hire and fire so what's the significance that you're offering on this i don't understand your point mike you've cited this passage which i understand but what's the significance as you say judge wallace asked why the district court the judge was brought up the point that the district court erred in in saying that bello did not have the higher the power to hire and fire and i agree that the district court erred but the the reason you offering this passage from line eleven to line seventeen as evidence of error or what that's that's evidence that the reason the district court did not find that mr billow had the hired the power to hire and fire is because the district court considered the power to be an inference this record that mr bello personally could have hired or fired this individual who is about three or four lines of managerial levels below him not directly no your hon i'm not on i mean i'm just saying i just don't understand why you're i don't see how you're representing your client's best interest when you disagree but that's up to you i think i think i understand what you have to say i just think