Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_17-cv-00168/USCOURTS-casd-3_17-cv-00168-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 710
Nature of Suit: Fair Labor Standards Act
Cause of Action: 29:0201fl FLSA: Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

CARLY HECK, an individual; SARA 

LUND, an individual; and ALLY 

ORTANEZ, an individual,

Plaintiffs,

v.

HEAVENLY COUTURE, INC., a 

California Corporation,

Defendant.

Case No.: 3:17-CV-0168-CAB-NLS

ORDER RE MOTION TO DISMISS 

FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT 

AND MOTION TO COMPEL 

ARBITRATION

[Doc. Nos. 27 and 28]

This matter is before the Court on Defendant Heavenly Couture’s motion to dismiss

the First Amended Complaint (“FAC”) [Doc. No. 27] and motion for an order compelling 

arbitration and/or immediately staying civil action [Doc. No. 28]. The motions have been 

fully briefed and the Court deems them suitable for submission without oral argument. For 

the reasons set forth below, the motion to dismiss the FAC is GRANTED without leave to 

amend, and the motion to compel arbitration and/or stay civil action is deemed moot and 

DENIED without prejudice.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs Carly Heck, Sara Lund, and Ally Ortanez (collectively “Plaintiffs”) bring

this collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq. 

(“FLSA”). Plaintiffs were non-exempt, hourly, in-store employees of Defendant Heavenly 

Couture, Inc., a California corporation which operates a chain of retail clothing stores.

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Plaintiffs allege Defendant forced Plaintiffs to work uncompensated regular and overtime 

hours. Plaintiffs also allege Defendant failed to provide state-law-mandated meal and rest 

breaks, and that Defendant attempted to conceal such conduct by failing to provide accurate 

wage statements. Plaintiffs allege Defendant maintains a policy requiring employees to 

work off the clock during breaks and meal periods, and that Defendant failed to compensate 

Plaintiffs for overtime hours worked as required by FLSA and California law.

On October 11, 2016, Plaintiffs filed an action in the San Diego Superior Court, 

alleging various state law wage and hour claims against Defendant for: (1) failure to pay 

meal period premium pay; (2) failure to pay rest break premium pay; (3) failure to pay 

overtime wages; (4) failure to pay regular wages; (5) waiting time penalties; (6)violations 

of California’s Unfair Competition Law; and (7) failure to provide accurate wage 

statements (the “state court action”). [Doc. No. 11-2, ¶2.] Defendant filed a motion to 

compel arbitration in the state court action on January 13, 2017. [Doc. No. 11-2, ¶3.] Prior 

to the hearing scheduled for February 10, 2017 on that motion, Plaintiffs dismissed the

state court action without prejudice [Doc. No. 11-2, ¶¶3-5] and subsequently filed this 

action, which mirrored the state court action but added an additional cause of action under 

the FLSA (the “federal court action”). [Doc. No. 1.]

On March 9, 2017, Defendant filed a motion to dismiss the original complaint in the 

federal court action on the grounds that it failed to state a claim under the FLSA, and on 

the grounds that the state law claims do not arise from the same common nucleus of 

operative facts as Plaintiff’s sole federal claim. [See generally Doc. No. 10-1.]1 On June 

16, 2017, this Court granted the motion to dismiss with leave to amend as to the FLSA 

claim, and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s state law claims. 

[Doc. No. 22.]

On July 7, 2017, Plaintiffs filed the FAC with a single claim for an FLSA violation. 

 

1 Defendant also filed a motion to compel arbitration, which was denied as moot. [Doc. No. 22.]

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[Doc. No. 23.] On July 25, 2017, Defendant filed a motion to dismiss the FAC [Doc. No. 

27], and a motion to compel arbitration and/or immediately staying action [Doc. No. 28]. 

On August 11, 2017, Plaintiffs filed oppositions to the motions. [Doc. Nos. 29, 30.] On 

August 18, 2017, Defendant filed replies to the oppositions. [Doc. Nos. 32, 33.]

ALLEGATIONS OF FAC

Most of the allegations of the FAC mirror those of the original complaint in the 

federal court action. In summary, Plaintiffs allege: Defendant unlawfully forced 

Plaintiffs to work uncompensated regular and overtime hours, cheating Plaintiffs out of 

premium pay for regular and overtime pay. [Doc. No. 23 at ¶4.] Additionally, Defendant 

exploited Plaintiffs by failing to provide legally mandated meal and rest breaks. Id. 

Defendant attempted to conceal its unlawful conduct by failing to provide accurate wage 

statements. Id. Defendant failed to pay all wages when due. Id.

Defendant refused to give Plaintiffs proper meal breaks. Defendant’s uniform 

policy was for its employees to clock out for their meal periods and return to the sales 

floor to continue working. In other words, Defendant required Plaintiffs to work off the 

clock and during legally-mandated meal periods. [Doc. No. 23 at ¶14.] 

Defendant also required Plaintiffs to work more than eight hours in each day, 

sometimes requiring that Plaintiffs work more than twelve hours in a day. Additionally, 

Defendant required Plaintiffs to work more than forty hours per week. Defendant did not 

adequately compensate Plaintiffs for overtime hours worked, as required under the 

FLSA. [Doc. No. 23 at ¶15.] Defendant required Plaintiffs to work more than forty hours 

per week. Id.

In addition, the FAC alleges as follows:

Defendant’s uniform policy required that Plaintiffs worked through their legallymandated meal breaks. Defendant also uniformly refused to compensate Plaintiffs for this 

time worked. Instead, Plaintiffs were forced to clock out for a meal period, return to the 

work floor, and help customers. Plaintiffs were not compensated for regular-pay work 

time because they worked off the clock during their meal breaks. For example, if an 

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employee was scheduled to work from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with a planned thirtyminute meal break, the number of scheduled hours would be six and one half. However, 

the employee would clock out for their meal break but return to work on the floor, thus 

working through their scheduled thirty-minute break, and causing the number of hours 

actually worked to become seven. Defendant never compensated Plaintiffs for these extra 

periods of time worked. [Doc. No. 23 at ¶18.] 

Additionally, Plaintiffs were sometimes not compensated for overtime hours 

because the additional time worked—through their meal break—caused the number of 

hours they worked to exceed eight hours in one day (and sometimes twelve hours in one 

day). For example, if an employee was scheduled to work from 10:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., 

with a thirty-minute meal period built in, the number of hours scheduled to be worked 

would have been eight. However, because the employee is forced—by Defendant’s 

explicit instruction and uniform policy—to work during the scheduled thirty-minute 

break, the number of hours actually worked becomes eight and one half. Defendant failed 

to ever pay for this extra half hour and never provided overtime pay for causing 

Plaintiffs’ shifts to exceed eight hours of time worked. [Doc. No. 23 at ¶19.] 

Defendant’s uniform policy included instructions directed at each employee—

including Plaintiffs—to falsify their time records in this fashion. In other words, 

Defendant required and instructed Plaintiffs and similarly situated employees to falsify 

their time records by clocking out for—but not actually taking—their meal breaks. [Doc. 

No. 23 at ¶20.]

During every workweek in [each] period [that each Plaintiff was employed], 

[Plaintiff] was required to follow Defendant’s uniform policies mandating that she:

a. Clock out for her legally-required meal period, but return to the floor to 

continue working through the meal period—during every shift she 

worked; 

b. Ensure that her time records inaccurately reflected that she did in fact 

take her meal period—during every shift she worked;

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c. Work more than eight hours in a day without receiving the statutorily 

required overtime pay—at least once a week; and 

d. Work more than twelve hours in a day without receiving the statutorilyrequired overtime pay—less than once a week but more than once a 

month.” [Doc. No. 23 at ¶¶21-26.]

Finally, [each Plaintiff] was explicitly instructed to follow the policies and 

procedures listed in the preceding paragraphs, through the duration of her employment. 

[Doc. No. 23 at ¶¶ 22, 24, 26.] 

LEGAL STANDARD FOR MOTION TO DISMISS

To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), “a complaint must contain 

sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its 

face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. 

Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). Thus, the Court “accept[s] factual allegations in the 

complaint as true and construe[s] the pleadings in the light most favorable to the 

nonmoving party.” Manzarek v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 519 F.3d 1025, 1031 

(9th Cir. 2008). On the other hand, the Court is “not bound to accept as true a legal 

conclusion couched as a factual allegation.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678; see also Lee v. City of 

Los Angeles, 250 F.3d 668, 679 (9th Cir. 2001) (“Conclusory allegations of law are 

insufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss”). Nor is the Court “required to accept as true 

allegations that contradict exhibits attached to the Complaint or . . . allegations that are

merely conclusory, unwarranted deductions of fact, or unreasonable inferences.” DanielsHall v. Nat’l Educ. Ass’n, 629 F.3d 992, 998 (9th Cir. 2010). “In sum, for a complaint to 

survive a [12(b)(6)] motion to dismiss, the non-conclusory factual content, and reasonable 

inferences from that content, must be plausibly suggestive of a claim entitling the plaintiff 

to relief.” Moss v. U.S. Secret Serv., 572 F.3d 962, 969 (9th Cir. 2009) (quotations omitted). 

Finally, “[l]eave to amend may . . . be denied for repeated failure to cure deficiencies by 

previous amendment.” Abragninin v. AMVAC Chem. Corp, 545 F.3d 733, 742 (9th Cir. 

2008)(citations omitted).

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ANALYSIS OF MOTION TO DISMISS

There are two issues with which the FLSA is concerned: (1) weekly overtime

compensation (29 U.S.C. §207(a)(1)) and (2) payment of federal minimum wage (29 

U.S.C. §206(a)).

A. Weekly Overtime Pay.

The FLSA's overtime compensation provision entitles covered employees to time

and-a-half wages for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek. 29 U.S.C. §207(a)(1).

Accordingly, to state a claim the plaintiff must allege that she worked more than 40 hours 

per workweek and did not receive the correct overtime pay for that week (or weeks).

The Ninth Circuit’s decision in Landers v. Quality Communications, Inc., 771 F.3d 

638 (9th Cir. 2014), clarified the pleading requirements set forth in Iqbal and Twombly in 

the context of an FLSA unpaid overtime claim. In Landers, the plaintiff alleged that he 

was not paid minimum wage and was “subjected to a ‘piecework no overtime’ wage 

system, whereby he worked in excess of forty hours per week without being compensated 

for his overtime.” Landers, 771 F.3d at 640. The Ninth Circuit held that these allegations 

were inadequate, and that although “detailed factual allegations regarding the number of 

overtime hours worked are not required to state a plausible claim, . . . to survive a motion 

to dismiss, a plaintiff asserting a claim to overtime payments must allege that she worked 

more than forty hours in a given workweek without being compensated for the overtime 

hours worked during that workweek.” Id. at 644-45. To that end, the Ninth Circuit 

affirmed dismissal of the complaint, finding that “Landers’s allegations failed to provide 

sufficient detail about the length and frequency of his unpaid work to support a reasonable 

inference that he worked more than forty hours in a given week.” Id. at 646 (internal 

quotations and brackets omitted).

In the original complaint in the federal court action, Plaintiffs’ allegations failed to 

provide sufficient detail regarding the length and frequency of unpaid work. Plaintiffs 

asserted that “Defendant required Plaintiffs to work more than forty hours per week.” [Doc. 

No. 1 at ¶16.] Plaintiffs then asserted that “Defendants did not adequately compensate 

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Plaintiffs for overtime hours worked....” Id. These are merely legal conclusions which 

recite the elements of a FLSA violation but do not meet the required burden under Landers. 

The FAC fails to cure the defects of the original complaint. Once again, Plaintiffs’ 

allegations fail to provide sufficient detail regarding the length and frequency of unpaid 

overtime work. Just as in the original complaint, Plaintiffs assert that “Defendant required 

Plaintiffs to work more than forty hours per week.” [Doc. No. 1 at ¶16 and Doc. No. 23 at 

¶15.] Also remaining unchanged, Plaintiffs assert that “Defendants did not adequately 

compensate Plaintiffs for overtime hours worked, as required under the FLSA.” Id. These 

are merely legal conclusions which recite the elements of a FLSA violation. Landers, 771 

F.3d at 644-45.

Plaintiffs have added some factual allegations in the FAC, including that Plaintiffs

would: 

“c. [w]ork more than eight hours in a day without receiving the statutorily required 

overtime pay—at least once a week; and 

d. Work more than twelve hours in a day without receiving the statutorily-required 

overtime pay—less than once a week but more than once a month.” [Doc. No. 23 at ¶¶21-

26.]

However, Plaintiffs fail to show how working over eight or twelve hours in a day

(once per week or once per month) caused them to work over forty hours in one week. For 

example, there is no allegation that Plaintiffs worked five or more days per week, such that 

working more than 8 hours in a day would cause them to exceed the weekly overtime. 

While the additional allegations in the FAC may bolster Plaintiffs’ claims for daily 

overtime, which is a state law issue, they do not state an FLSA claim with regard to weekly 

overtime pay. 

B. Minimum wage.

The FLSA's minimum wage provision entitles employees to a wage “not less than 

$7.25 an hour.” 29 U.S.C. §206(a). To claim improper compensation under this provision, 

the plaintiffs must allege that the wages received fell below this statutory minimum. 

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However, the workweek as a whole, not each individual hour within the work week, 

determines an employee's “wages” for purposes of determining FLSA violations. See 29 

C.F.R. §§776.4(a), 778.104. Thus, an employer's failure to compensate an employee for 

any particular hours worked does not necessarily violate the minimum wage provision of 

the FLSA. See Dove v. Coupe, 759 F.2d 167, 171 (D.C. Cir. 1985). If the total wage paid 

to an employee in any given workweek divided by the total hours worked that week equals 

or exceeds the applicable minimum wage, there is no FLSA violation. Adair v. City of 

Kirkland, 185 F.3d 1055, 1062 n. 6 (9th Cir. 1999)(“even though it is uncompensated, the 

employees are still being paid a minimum wage when their salaries are averaged across 

their actual time worked”); Balasanyan v. Nordstrom, Inc., 913 F.Supp.2d 1001, 1008 

(S.D. Cal. 2012). See also Sullivan v. Riviera Holdings Corp., No. 2:14-cv-00165-APGVCF, 2014 WL 290303, at *1(D. Nev. May 29, 2015). To state a plausible minimum wage 

claim under this rule, therefore, a complaint must allege that the plaintiff's weekly wages 

fall below the statutory minimum. Id.

Here, there is no allegation whatsoever as to the amount of Plaintiffs’ weekly or 

hourly wages. While Plaintiffs allege that some hours worked were unpaid, they do not 

provide any allegations to demonstrate that, when the unpaid hours are averaged with the 

paid hours in a given workweek, Plaintiffs are paid less than $7.25 per hour. As a result, 

Plaintiffs fail to state an FLSA minimum wage violation.

For example, in Adair, police officers alleged that they were not compensated for 

ten-minute briefings held before their shifts started. Adair, 185 F.3d at 1058. “The district 

court found that while the ten-minute briefings were compensable work time, attendance 

at the briefings was compensated through the officers' salary. The court then found that the 

City had complied with the FLSA. Because the salary, when averaged across the total 

actual number of hours worked, still paid more per hour than the minimum wage, the court 

found that the City complied with the FLSA's minimum wage requirements.” Id. at 1058–

59. When affirming the district court’s ruling, the Ninth Circuit stated that, “[t]he district 

court properly rejected any minimum wage claim the officers might have brought by 

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finding that their salary, when averaged across their total time worked, still paid them 

above minimum wage.” Id. at 1063. 

In Sullivan, claimants alleged an FLSA violation because the defendant “require[d] 

them to work approximately 30 minutes off-the-clock per day to transport cash to and from 

the ‘cashier's cage’ before and after their scheduled shifts.” Sullivan, 2014 WL 2960303, 

at *1. Defendant’s motion to dismiss was granted because “the workweek as a whole, not 

each individual hour within the work week, determines an employee's ‘wages’ for purposes 

of determining FLSA violations.” Id. “The [plaintiffs’] First Claim for Relief, for ‘all hours 

worked,’ misunderstands the FLSA. If their average weekly pay does not fall below $7.25 

per hour, then the FLSA does not grant them a remedy for minimum wage violations. This 

is so regardless of whether they were actually paid for each hour worked. The [plaintiffs]

have not pleaded sufficient facts for [the Court] to reasonably infer that their average hourly 

pay for any given workweek fell below the statutory minimum; indeed, they do not even 

plead their current hourly wage.” Id. at 2. 

Here, Plaintiffs allege that they were not paid for meal periods [Doc. No. 23 at ¶14], 

but they do not allege how much they were paid per hour or how many hours/days they 

worked per week. Thus, similar to ten-minute briefings worked by the officers in Adair or 

thirty-minute cash transport periods from Sullivan, Plaintiffs’ allegedly uncompensated 

meal periods, without more, do not state a minimum wage violation. Plaintiffs have not 

shown how working uncompensated periods during their workday resulted in them 

receiving less than $7.25 per hour, on average, in a given workweek. There are simply no 

facts pleaded to allow the Court to reasonably infer that Defendant failed to pay minimum 

wage for all hours worked in a given workweek. Therefore, Plaintiffs fail to state a claim 

for an FLSA minimum wage violation.

MOTION TO COMPEL ARBITRATION

Given that the motion to dismiss is granted without leave to amend, the motion to 

compel arbitration is denied as moot.

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CONCLUSION

To state an FLSA overtime and/or minimum wage violation, Plaintiffs needed to 

show—with factual allegations—that they worked greater than forty hours per week or 

were not paid at least minimum wage for all hours worked in a week. This means 

Plaintiffs have the burden of pleading how often they worked greater than forty hours per 

week without overtime pay. Plaintiffs also have the burden of pleading how much they 

were paid and whether—averaged across all hours worked per week—this salary dropped 

below minimum wage. These factual allegations are simply absent from the FAC, 

notwithstanding this Court’s clear directive in the previous order that such allegations 

were needed. Given that this is Plaintiffs’ second attempt to state a claim under the 

FLSA, as well as the suspicious procedural history of this case, further amendment would 

be futile.

For the reasons set forth above, the motion to dismiss is GRANTED WITHOUT 

LEAVE TO AMEND and the motion to compel arbitration is DENIED AS MOOT. 

The Clerk of the Court shall CLOSE the case.

Dated: October 6, 2017

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