Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-12-03753/USCOURTS-ca8-12-03753-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Peg Bouaphakeo
Appellee
Javier Frayre
Appellee
Jose A. Garcia
Appellee
Mario Martinez
Appellee
Jesus A. Montes
Appellee
Heribento Renteria
Appellee
Tyson Foods
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 12-3753

___________________________

Peg Bouaphakeo; Javier Frayre; Jose A. Garcia; Mario Martinez; Jesus A. Montes;

Heribento Renteria, on behalf ofthemselves and all othersimilarly situated individuals

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiffs - Appellees

v.

Tyson Foods, Inc.

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant

____________

 Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Iowa - Sioux City

____________

 Submitted: February 11, 2014

 Filed: August 25, 2014

____________

Before SMITH, BEAM, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.

____________

BENTON, Circuit Judge.

Peg Bouaphakeo and other named plaintiffs are employees of Tyson Foods,

Inc. They represent a class of employees at Tyson’s meat-processing facility in Storm

Lake, Iowa. They sued Tyson for not paying wages due under the Fair Labor

Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., and the Iowa Wage Payment

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Collection Law (IWPCL), Iowa Code 91A.1 et seq. A jury returned a verdict for the

class. Tyson appeals. Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, this court affirms.

I.

The employees are current and former “gang-time” employees at Tyson’s

facility. The background is similar to that in Lopez v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 690 F.3d

869, 873-75 (8th Cir. 2012) (adapted to the facts of this case):

To calculate the employees’ compensableworking time,Tyson measures

“gang time”—when the employees are at their working stations and the

production line ismoving. The employees claimTyson failed to provide

FLSA overtime compensation for donning (putting on) personal

protective equipment (PPE) and clothing before production and again

after lunch, and for doffing (taking off) PPE and clothing before lunch

and again after production. The PPE and clothing worn by individual

employees vary depending on their role in the process. Tyson classifies

items of PPE and clothing as either “unique” or “non-unique” to the

meat-processing industry. . . . The employees also seek compensation

for transporting the items from lockers to the production floor.

In addition to “gang time,” Tyson adds “K-code” time to each

employee’s paycheck. Before 2007, Tyson paid four minutes of K-code

time per day to each [employee in a department where knives were used]

in order to compensate for the donning and doffing of unique items. 

From [February] 2007 to [June] 2010, Tyson added [several minutes]

per day for pre-and post-shift walking time required of the employee. .

. . Tyson does not record the actual time that employees perform any of

these tasks.

. . . .

The FLSA prohibits the employment of any person “for a workweek

longer than forty hours unlesssuch employee receives compensation for

his employment in excess of the hours above specified at a rate not less

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than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.” 

29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1); IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21, 25 (2005). An

employee who sues for unpaid overtime “has the burden of proving that

he performed work for which he was not properly compensated.” 

Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 686-87 (1946),

superseded by statute on other grounds, Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947,

Pub. L. No. 80-49, 61 Stat. 84; Fast v. Applebee’s Int’l, Inc., 638 F.3d

872, 881 (8th Cir. 2011). “Neither ‘work’ nor ‘workweek’ is defined in

the statute.” Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 25. At one time, the Supreme Court

defined work as “physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or

not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and

primarily for the benefit of the employer and his business.” Tennessee

Coal, Iron & R.R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590, 598

(1944), superseded by statute on other grounds, Portal-to-Portal Act of

1947, Pub. L. No. 80-49, 61 Stat. 84. The Court then “clarified that

‘exertion’ was not in fact necessary for an activity to constitute ‘work’

under the FLSA.” Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 25, citing Armour & Co. v.

Wantock, 323 U.S. 126, 133 (1944).

Whether an employee’s activity is “work” does not end the

compensability analysis. In the Portal-to-Portal Act, Congress excluded

some activities that might otherwise constitute work from the FLSA. 

The Act excepts two categories:

(1) walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of

performance of the principal activity or activities which such

employee is employed to perform, and

(2) activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said

principal activity or activities, which occur either prior to the time

on any particular workday at which such employee commences,

or subsequent to the time on any particular workday at which he

ceases, such principal activity or activities.

29 U.S.C. § 254(a); Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 26-28. “[A]ctivities performed

either before or after the regular work shift, on or off the production

line, are compensable . . . if those activities are an integral and

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indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered

workmen are employed and are not specifically excluded by [29 U.S.C.

§ 254(a)(1)].” Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 256 (1956) (emphasis

added). And, “any activity that is ‘integral and indispensable’ to a

‘principal activity’ is itself a ‘principal activity’ under [29 U.S.C. §

254(a)].” Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 37.

The Department of Labor has a “continuous workday rule,” generally

defining an employee’s “workday” as “the period between the

commencement and completion on the same workday of an employee’s

principal activity or activities.” 29 C.F.R. § 790.6(b); Alvarez, 546 U.S.

at 29, 37 (describing and applying the continuous workday rule). 

During the continuous workday, the compensability of all activities that

otherwise satisfy the requirements of the FLSA is not affected by the

Portal-to-Portal Act’s exceptions. In Alvarez, the Supreme Court held

that “during a continuous workday, any walking time that occurs after

the beginning of the employee’s first principal activity and before the

end of the employee’s last principal activity is excluded from the scope

of [the Portal-to-Portal Act], and as a result is covered by the FLSA.” 

Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 37.

The employees sued in 2007, claiming that Tyson’s K-code time was

insufficient to cover compensable pre- and post-production line activities, violating

the FLSA and IWPCL. The district court certified the FLSA claim as a collective

1

action and the IWPCL claim as a Rule 23 class action. During a nine-day trial,

2

The Honorable Mark W. Bennett, United States District Judge for the

1

Northern District of Iowa. The case was later transferred to the Honorable John A.

Jarvey, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Iowa.

See Salazar v. Agriprocessors, Inc., 527 F. Supp. 2d 873, 884 (N.D. Iowa 2

2007) (finding, in a similar donning and doffing case, that “there is no novel issue of

state law in the IWPCL Claim, nor is there a difference in the terms of proof required

by the FLSA Claim and the IWPCL Claim. There are no issues of first impression

in the IWPCL Claim that the Iowa courts would be better suited to answer. . . . [T]he

substance and basis of the FLSA Claim and the IWPCL Claim is virtually

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plaintiffs proved liability and damages by using individual timesheets, along with

average donning, doffing, and walking times calculated from 744 employee

observations. The jury returned a verdict for the class of $2,892,378.70. With

liquidated damages, the final judgment totaled $5,785,757.40.

II.

Tyson argues that the district court erred in certifying the FLSA collective

action—under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b)—and the IWPCL class—under Rule 23. Class

3

certification isreviewed for abuse of discretion. Avritt v. Reliastar Life Ins. Co., 615

F.3d 1023, 1029 (8th Cir. 2010) (reviewing class certification under Rule 23 for

abuse of discretion); Hipp v. Liberty Nat’l Life Ins. Co., 252 F.3d 1208, 1219 (11th

Cir. 2001) (“The decision to create an opt-in class under § 216(b), like the decision

on class certification under Rule 23, remains soundly within the discretion of the

district court.”). A district court may certify a class under Rule 23(b) if “questions

of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting

only individual members,” and “a class action is superior to other available methods

for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b). The

FLSA allows named plaintiffs to sue “for and in behalf of . . . themselves and other

employees similarly situated.” 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). Plaintiffs may be similarly

indistinguishable, that is, the claims involve identical facts and highly similar legal

theories.”)(internal quotationsremoved). See generally Lindsay v. Gov’t Emps. Ins.

Co., 448 F.3d 416, 425 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (finding “state law claims essentially

replicate the FLSA claims” in an overtime case).

The district court conditionally certified the FLSA class, and many employees 3

opted in. See Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, 133 S. Ct. 1523, 1530 (2013)

(finding that “employees . . . become partiesto a collective action . . . by filing written

consent with the court” after conditional certification). While the district court never

revisited the conditional certification, the parties treat the FLSA certification as

unconditional.

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situated when “they suffer from a single, FLSA-violating policy, and when proof of

that policy or of conduct in conformity with that policy proves a violation asto all the

plaintiffs.” O’Brien v. Ed Donnelly Enters., Inc., 575 F.3d 567, 585 (6th Cir. 2009). 

A court may consider “(1) disparate factual and employment settings ofthe individual

plaintiffs; (2) the various defenses available to defendant which appear to be

individual to each plaintiff; [and] (3) fairness and procedural considerations.” 

Thiessen v. Gen. Elec. Capital Corp., 267 F.3d 1095, 1103 (10th Cir. 2001).4

According to Tyson,factual differences between plaintiffs—differencesin PPE

and clothing between positions, the individual routines of employees, and variation

in duties and management among departments—make class certification improper. 

These differences, Tyson says, do not allow the class action to “generate common

answers apt to drive the resolution ofthe litigation.” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes,

131 S. Ct. 2541, 2551 (2011). See Luiken v. Domino’s Pizza, LLC, 705 F.3d 370,

374-76 (8th Cir. 2013) (applying Dukes and reversing certification when the

interaction between individual customers and employees meant liability was

“dominated by individual issues”); Bennett v. Nucor Corp., 656 F.3d 802, 815 (8th

Cir. 2011) (denying certification when there were “stark inter-departmental variations

in job titles, functions performed, and equipment used”). Unlike Dukes, Tyson had

a specific company policy—the payment of K-code time for donning, doffing, and

walking—that applied to all class members. Unlike Dukes, class members worked

at the same plant and used similar equipment. The time study showed that donning

FLSA collective actions and Rule 23 class actions have separate procedures,

4

such as the “opt in” requirement to an FLSA collective action and the “opt out”

requirement for a Rule 23 class action. See Symczyk, 133 S. Ct. at 1529 (finding Rule

23 precedent inapposite when considering the mootness of an FLSA action with no

“opt in” parties). Contrary to the dissent’s statement, the Supreme Court in Symczyk

did not find that these actions “may not be procedurally homogenized for trial” or “do

not lend themselves to inextricably intertwined trials.” Neither party complains of

procedural error from “homogenizing” the claims at trial. 

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and doffing all equipment, plus walking, took an average of 18 minutes in the

fabrication department and 21 minutesin the kill department. True, applying Tyson’s

K-code policy and expert testimony to “generate . . . answers” for individual overtime

claims did require inference, but this inference is allowable under Anderson v. Mt.

Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 687 (1946) (allowing liability based on “just and

reasonable inference” when complete records do not exist). While individual

plaintiffs varied in their donning and doffing routines, their complaint is not

“dominated by individual issues” such that “the varied circumstances. . . prevent ‘one

stroke’ determination.” Luiken, 705 F.3d at 374, 376, quoting Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at

2551. The district court did not abuse its discretion in certifying the class.

Tyson also contends that the class should be decertified because evidence at

trial showed that some class members did not work overtime and would receive no

FLSA damages even if Tyson under-compensated their donning, doffing, and

walking. See In re Zurn Pex Plumbing Prods. Liab. Litig., 644 F.3d 604, 616 (8th

Cir. 2011) (“A district court may not certify a class . . . ‘if it contains members who

lack standing.’”), quoting Avritt, 615 F.3d at 1034; Blades v. MonsantoCo., 400 F.3d

562, 571 (8th Cir. 2005) (when “not every member of the proposed classes can prove

with common evidence that they suffered impact from the alleged conspiracy . . .

damages to all class members must be shown to justify the class action”). Cf.

Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC, 705 F.3d 770, 774 (7th Cir. 2013) (finding

certification improper when piece-rate systemvaried pay fromworker-to-worker, use

of an average conferred a “windfall” on some class members, and employees had

incentive to under-report time). Tyson exaggerates the authority for its contention. 

See Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S. Ct. 1426, 1433 (2013) (allowing variation in

damages unless “individual damage calculations . . . overwhelm questions common

to the class”); Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Ret. Plans & Trust Funds, 133 S. Ct.

1184, 1191 (2013) (“Rule 23(b)(3) requires a showing that questions common to the

class predominate, not that those questions will be answered, on the merits, in favor

ofthe class.”)(second emphasis added); DeBoer v. Mellon Mortg. Co., 64 F.3d 1171,

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1174 (8th Cir. 1995) (“The fact that individuals . . . will have . . . claims of differing

strengths does not impact on the commonality of the class asstructured.”); Mejdrech

v. Met-Coil Sys. Corp., 319 F.3d 910, 911 (7th Cir. 2003) (“If there are genuinely

common issues, issuesidentical across all the claimants, issuesmoreover the accuracy

of the resolution of which is unlikely to be enhanced by repeated proceedings, then

it makes good sense, especially when the class is large, to resolve those issues in one

fell swoop.”).5

At any rate, at Tyson’s request, the jury was instructed, “Any employee who

has already received full compensation for all activities you may find to be

compensable is not entitled to recover any damages.” Tyson’s instruction directed

the jury to treat plaintiffs with no damages as class members. It is “fundamental that

where the defendant . . . ‘invited error’ there can be no reversible error.” United

States v. Beason, 220 F.3d 964, 968 (8th Cir. 2000), quoting United States v. Steele,

610 F.2d 504, 505 (8th Cir. 1979).

The dissent says that the class fails because commonality under Rule 23 5

“requires . . . that all class members suffered the same injury,” and that “the locution

‘injury’ includes the measure of a class member’s individual damages.” Individual

damage calculations, however, are permissible if they do not “overwhelm questions

common to the class.” Comcast, 133 S. Ct. at 1433. The district court found the

differences between gang-time employees “small” and allowed individual damage

calculations based on undisputed employee timesheets. This was not an abuse of

discretion.

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III.

Tyson believesthat plaintiffs improperly relied on a formula to prove liability.

In Dukes, the Supreme Court disapproved of “Trial by Formula.”

A sample set of the class members would be selected, as to whom

liability for sex discrimination and the backpay owing as a result would

be determined in depositions supervised by a master. The percentage of

claims determined to be valid would then be applied to the entire

remaining class, and the number of (presumptively) valid claims thus

derived would be multiplied by the average backpay award in the sample

set to arrive at the entire class recovery—without further individualized

proceedings.

Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at 2561. Here, plaintiffs do not prove liability only for a sample

set of class members. They prove liability for the class as a whole, using employee

time records to establish individual damages. Using statistics orsamplesin litigation

is not necessarily trial by formula. See Comcast, 133 S. Ct. at 1434 (considering

expert’s multiple-regression model); Perez v. Mountaire Farms, Inc., 650 F.3d 350,

372 (4th Cir. 2011) (favoring “a calculation based on the summation of mean times”

to represent “the amount of time that employees working at the plant actually spend

donning and doffing”). Cf. Martinez v. Ryan, 132 S. Ct. 1309, 1325 n.5 (2012)

(relying on “a sample of federal habeas cases”).

Plaintiffs do rely on inference from average donning, doffing, and walking

times, but they apply this analysis to each class member individually. Using this

representative evidence is comparable to a jury applying testimony from named

plaintiffs to find classwide liability. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 (allowing representative

parties when their claims “are typical of the claims or defenses of the class” and they

“fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class”). For the donning, doffing,

and walking in Mt. Clemens, testimony fromeight employees established liability for

300 similarly situated workers. Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S. at 684; Mt. Clemens Pottery

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Co. v. Anderson, 149 F.2d 461, 462 (6th Cir. 1945) (discussing testimony). To prove

damages, the Court remanded for “the determination of the amount of walking time

involved and the amount of preliminary activities performed” based on “whatever

reasonable inferences can be drawn from the employees’ evidence.” Mt. Clemens,

328 U.S. at 693-94.

Tyson claims that plaintiffs presented insufficient evidence to prove damages

classwide. See Murray v. Stuckey’s, Inc., 939 F.2d 614, 621 (8th Cir. 1991)

(“[P]laintiffs’ evidence failed to show, for each individual plaintiff, ‘that he has in

fact performed work for which he was improperly compensated.’”), quoting Mt.

Clemens, 328 U.S. at 687; Marshall v. Truman Arnold Distrib. Co., Inc., 640 F.2d

906, 911 (8th Cir. 1981) (requiring further evidence from non-testifying employees

before awarding damages when earnings projections were substantially rebutted by

cross-examination). Cf. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at 2560 (requiring “individualized

determinations of each employee’s eligibility for backpay” as a procedural

prerequisite for certification under Title VII). This court “will not reverse a jury

verdict for insufficient evidence unless ‘after viewing the evidence in the light most

favorable to the verdict, [it concludes] that no reasonable juror could have returned

a verdict for the non-moving party.’” Denesha v. Farmers Ins. Exch., 161 F.3d 491,

497 (8th Cir. 1998), quoting Ryther v. KARE 11, 108 F.3d 832, 836 (8th Cir. 1997)

(en banc). See Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., 134 S. Ct. 870, 880 (2014)

(agreeing “with the basic perception of the Courts of Appeals that it is most unlikely

Congress meant [the FLSA] to convertfederal judgesinto time-study professionals”). 

Tyson has no evidence ofthe specific time each class member spent donning, doffing,

and walking. “[W]hen an employer has failed to keep proper records, courts should

not hesitate to award damages based on the ‘just and reasonable inference’ from the

evidence presented.” Reich v. Stewart, 121 F.3d 400, 406 (8th Cir. 1997), quoting

Martin v. Tony & Susan Alamo Found., 952 F.2d 1050, 1052 (8th Cir. 1992)

(allowing “pattern or practice” evidence when defendant provided “self-serving,

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unsubstantiated approximations” of employee hours), citing Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S.

at 687-88.

To prove damages, plaintiffs use individual timesheets, along with average

times calculated from a sample of 744 observations of employee donning, doffing,

and walking. Plaintiffs’ expert testified that the sample was large for this type of

study, representative, and approximately random. He testified that the study used

“accepted procedure in industrial engineering.” Tyson’s Director of Human

Resourcestestified that K-code time did not include the donning and doffing of much

non-unique PPE. Pay data—which came directly from Tyson—showed the amount

of K-code time each individual received. Sufficient evidence existed to support a

“reasonable inference” of classwide liability. Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S. at 687.

Tyson asserts that even if sufficient evidence supported damages, plaintiffs’

claims still fail because it is uncertain if any uncompensated work was performed,

citing Carmody v. Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, 713 F.3d 401, 406

(8th Cir. 2013) (“Anderson [v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co.] only applies where the

existence of damagesis certain. . . . Anderson allows uncertainty only for the amount

of damages.”). In Carmody, the plaintiffs did not “produce[] evidence indicating any

hours worked over forty hours per week . . . were never paid.” Id. The plaintiffs “did

not provide any evidence of actual damages because the testimony contained no

reference to overtime hours that violated the FLSA.” Id. at 407. Here, Tyson

stipulates that “workers at the Storm Lake plant tend to work a significant amount of

overtime on a weekly basis.” Plaintiffs show uncompensated overtime work by

applying average donning, doffing, and walking times to employee timesheets. The

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evidence is “susceptible to [the] reasonable inference” that the jury’s verdict is 

correct. Troknya v. Cleveland Chiropractic Clinic, 280 F.3d 1200, 1206 (8th Cir.

2002).6

* * * * * * *

The judgment is affirmed.

 BEAM, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

For two independent but somewhat factually related reasons, this case should

be reversed, remanded and dismissed. First, under the circumstances of this

litigation, neither the putative Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective action (the

so-called federal class) nor the purported Iowa Wage Payment Collection Law

(IWPCL) Rule 23(b)(3) class (the so-called state class) were eligible for class

certification, either as a matter of fact or a matter of law. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v.

Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541, 2551 (2011); O'Brien v. Ed Donnelly Enters., Inc., 575 F.3d

567, 583-84 (6th Cir. 2009); Thiessen v. General Elec. Capital Corp., 267 F.3d 1095,

1102-03 (10th Cir. 2001). Second, Rule 23 state-law-based class actions are

fundamentally different than collective actions authorized under the FLSA and may

Tyson also argues that the jury failed to follow the directions of plaintiffs’

6

damages expert, who testified that the jury could choose only “all or nothing” of her

model. A jury is not required to follow an expert’s conclusion. See Children’s

Broad. Corp. v. The Walt Disney Co., 357 F.3d 860, 866 (8th Cir. 2004).

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not be procedurally homogenized for trial as done in this case. Genesis Healthcare 7

Corp. v. Symczyk, 133 S. Ct. 1523, 1529 (2013).

I. BACKGROUND

This litigation generallyinvolves hourly production employees of Tyson Foods

at its Storm Lake, Iowa, meat-processing facility. But, the dispute more basically

involves six named (lead) plaintiff employees from the kill, cut and retrim

departments of the Storm Lake operation who were paid their wages using, in part,

Tyson's "gang-time" compensation system but who also claim to have been owed

overtime pay resulting fromdisparate compensable work activities occurring at times

other than while earning daily "gang time" kill, cut and retrim department production

line compensation. The six attempt to assert two separate collective actions–a federal

statutory action asserting violations of the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219, and a state

statutory action separately based upon the IWPCL, Iowa Code Chapter 91A.

This case was originally assigned to the Honorable Mark Bennett who

conditionally "certified" a federal collective action class pursuant to 29 U.S.C. §

216(b) and a purported IWPCL state law class pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil

In its footnote 2, the court takes issue with this observation. In support, the

7

court cites Salazar v. AgriProcessors, Inc., 527 F. Supp. 2d 873 (N.D. Iowa 2007),

and Lindsay v. Government Employees Insurance Co., 448 F.3d 416 (D.C. Cir. 2006). 

Although subject matter jurisdiction was not in dispute in this case, Salazar and

Lindsay deal with whether a federal cause of action (the FLSA) and a state cause of

action (the IWPCL) "derive" sufficiently from the same "common nucleus of

operative facts" that, when joined, they form part of a case and controversy under

Article III of the United States Constitution. Lindsay, 448 F.3d at 424 (quotation

omitted), Salazar, 527 F. Supp. 2d at 880 (quotation omitted); See 28 U.S.C. §

1367(a). But, "case and controversy" standing is not the fundamental issue here. The

question is whether the separate federal and state claims were sufficiently identical

to be presented to the jury, as here, as one amalgamated cause of action. In my view,

Supreme Court precedent indicates they were not.

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Procedure 23(b)(3). Then, because the Honorable John Jarvey was already assigned

to several comparable cases involving Tyson, including a case involving Tyson

employees at Columbus Junction, Iowa, Guyton v. Tyson, No. 3:07-cv-00088-JAJTJS (S.D. Iowa) (a companion case on appeal), this matter was transferred to Judge

Jarvey for further pretrial and post-trial proceedings and for trial. The case has now

been litigated and is before this panel on appeal.

II. DISCUSSION

1. The Classes

A. The Federal FLSA Class

A collective action to recover damages permitted by the FLSA "may be

maintained against any employer . . . in any Federal or State court of competent

jurisdiction by anyone or more employees for and in behalf of himself or themselves

and other employees similarly situated." 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). However, "[n]o

employee shall be a party plaintiff to any such action unless he gives his consent in

writing to become such a party and such consent is filed in the court in which such

action is brought." Id. 

The six named lead plaintiff employees who sought to establish this collective

action bore the "burden ofshowing that the opt-in [consenting] plaintiffs are similarly

situated to the lead plaintiffs." O'Brien, 575 F.3d at 584. Judge Bennett, apparently

recognizing the likely existence of numerousfactors unrelated to the "gang-time" pay

used to determine a given Tyson employee's regular wages–factors amply established

by the evidence at trial–certified a "conditional" FLSA class consisting of employees

fromthe kill, cut and retrim departments at the Tyson plant paid through the so-called

gang-time compensation system within a discrete time period set forth in the

certification. Indeed, the conditional certification related only to the three

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departments and the gang-time pay earned in the production line in those

departments. No other regular or overtime pay calculation factors discussed at the

merits portion of the trial (such as: individual employment codes, specific duties,

wage-rate variations, knife wielding protections, sanitary clothing and equipment,

part-time work, illness, injury, shift differentials, and routine production line

overtime) were in any way incorporated as limitations on the use of the FLSA

conditional class. The record reveals that this "conditional" designation was never

withdrawn or modified at any time during or after the trial. According to the joint

stipulation of facts by the parties, there were 444 employees who consented to be a

part of this FLSA collective action class including the six named lead plaintiffs. 

B. The IWPCL State Class

"'In order to obtain class certification, a plaintiff has the burden ofshowing that

the class should be certified and that the requirements of Rule 23 are met.'" Luiken

v. Domino's Pizza, LLC, 705 F.3d 370, 372 (8th Cir. 2013) (quoting Coleman v.

Watt, 40 F.3d 255, 258 (8th Cir. 1994)). Judge Bennett, at the request of the same six

named plaintiffs who sought creation of and joined the FLSA collective class, 

ultimately certified what he termed a "modified" 3,344-person putative Rule 23 state

law class consisting of all "current and former employees of Tyson's Storm Lake,

Iowa, processing facility who have been employed at any time fromFebruary 7, 2005,

to the present, and who are or were paid under a 'gang-time' compensation system in

the Kill, Cut or Retrim departments." This certification also included no other

limiting or enhancing overtime pay calculation elements. The record discloses that

this certification was likewise never further embellished or modified during or after

trial.

The "gang-time system of payment" as referred to by Judge Bennett and

defined by the evidence is a system where employees are paid from the time their

production line starts to the time their production line ends. There is no contention

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by the named plaintiffs that the Storm Lake Tyson employees did not receive all

wages due and owing for time worked during the production line gang-time pay

periods. So, standing by itself, as it does in the class certifications, the gang-time

production line classification means little in the context of proving at trial through

evidence common to the class the overtime pay claims of the 3,344 members of the

allegedly underpaid overtime class. Supreme Court and Eighth Circuit precedent

demands otherwise. See Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at 2549-50 (discussing the requirements

of class certification); see also Lopez v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 690 F.3d 869, 874 (8th

Cir. 2012) (an employee who sues for unpaid overtime has the burden of proving he

performed work for which he was not properly compensated). 

To be certified for purposes of Rule 23(a), the collective groupings, that is the

putative classes, must have been such that Tyson was positioned to assert its

legitimately held common-to-the-class defenses against all members ofthe group who

claimed to have earned unpaid overtime wages. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(3). In this

same context, the class must have been limited to Tyson employees who could and

did establish entitlement to overtime pay resulting from overtime work performed

during compensable time, that is, work performed at times other than production line

gang-time pay periods–periods for which all class members were already routinely,

regularly, and unquestionably paid by Tyson in accordance with the law.

"In order to obtain class certification, a plaintiff has the burden ofshowing that

the class should be certified and that the requirements of Rule 23 are met." Luiken,

705 F.3d at 372 (quotation omitted). While a Rule 23(b)(3) class was purportedly

certified, any Rule 23 class may only be lawfully certified if the "trial court is

satisfied, after a rigorous analysis, that the prerequisites of Rule 23(a) have been

satisfied." Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at 2551 (quotation omitted). Actual, not presumed,

conformance with Rule 23(a) remains indispensable. Id. Frequently, as in this case,

"'rigorous analysis' will entail some overlap with the merits of the plaintiff's

underlying claim." Id. Rule 23(a)'s four bedrock requirements are numerosity,

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commonality, typicality and adequate representation (here, a named plaintiff with

standing). Commonality requiresthe plaintiff to demonstrate at the time of the merits

hearing on the underlying claim–that all class members suffered the same injury. 

Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at 2551. So, if the locution "injury" includesthe measure of a class

member's individual damages, as I believe it does, this class fails on that score alone.

The court majority apparently sees a pathway around plaintiffs' legal dilemma

arising from the above-noted class formulation failures. Although acknowledging

that class certification is improper when a "windfall" is conferred on some class

members, ante at 7, the court makes the following observation:

At any rate, at Tyson's request, the jury was instructed, "Any employee

who has already received full compensation for all activities you may

find to be compensable is not entitled to recover any damages." Tyson's

instruction directed the jury to treat plaintiffs with no damages as class

members. It is "fundamental that where the defendant . . . 'invited error'

there can be no reversible error." United States v. Beason, 220 F.3d

964, 968 (8th Cir. 2000) (quoting United States v. Steele, 610 F.2d 504,

505 (8th Cir. 1979)).

Ante at 8.

Thus, says the court, Tyson "directed the jury to treat plaintiffs with no

damages as class members." However, Tyson made no such class membership

directive to the jury through its instructional request and Beason and Steele are

wholly inapposite as case precedent for the court's faulty premise. The cases deal

only with run-of-the-mill evidentiary matters, not waivers oflegal principles. Beason

simply opened the door to the making of a Bruton exception by permitting an

admission from a non-testifying co-defendant, and Steele admitted otherwise

inadmissible hearsay evidence to clarify and rebut an issue opened by the criminal

defendant's cross-examination. Tyson, after vigorously resisting class action

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formulations at every turn in this litigation, and being denied, properly requested an

instruction that the plaintiffs be held to their evidentiary burdens of proof. 

C. The Merits

Fundamentally, as previously noted, this case emerges from two separate

causes of action brought through a single federal court complaint–a federal law cause

of action alleging liability leading to damages arising from violation of the FLSA and

a state law cause of action alleging liability and damages arising from violation of the

IWPCL. The burden of proof on all issues of statutory liability, injury and measure

of damages rests squarely upon the shoulders of the named plaintiffs. Lopez, 690

F.3d at 874. In this case, gang-time pay is not in dispute. The plaintiffs contend, as

does the court majority, that the overtime pay dispute involves time spent by a class

of Tyson employees in doffing and donning various sanitary and personal protection

equipment before and after the gang-time production line work has been completed

each day.

Tyson's Storm Lake employees are required to wear a different combination of

sanitary and protective gear. Those employees wearing knives to use in conjunction

with their particular duties on a particular day are required to wear a combination of

a plastic belly guard, mesh apron, mesh sleeve, plexiglass arm guard, mesh glove,

Polar glove, membrane skinner gloves, Polar sleeves, "steel" for maintaining the

knives and knife scabbards ("knife related gear"). Other workers are required to wear

a hard hat, hairnet, beard net, earplugs, ear muffs, rubber or cotton gloves, and rubber

or plastic aprons ("sanitary gear"). 

From 1998 until February 4, 2007, Tyson paid four extra minutes beyond

production line time for all production employees, referred to as "K-Code" time. 

From February 4, 2007, to June 28, 2010, Tyson ceased paying non-knife-wielding

employees for the time donning and doffing sanitary gear. From February 4, 2007,

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to June 28, 2010, Tyson paid knife-wielding employees between 4 to 8 minutes of KCode time, depending on the job, and employees who did not have a knife did not

receive K-Code time payments. 

Plaintiffs offered evidence at trial concerning a sample of putative class

employees from Dr. Kenneth Mericle and Dr. Liesl Fox. Fox's calculation testimony

fed off of Mericle's evidence concerning Rule 23 class damages for overtime pay. 

Fox testified, assuming Mericle's evidence was true, that at least 212 members of the

purported class did not suffer any damages because the doffing and donning time, less

the K-Code time "would not have been enough to kick them into overtime." Further,

while the plaintiffs' evidence generally indicated some individual overtime damages

ranging from a few cents to several thousand dollars, there were at least 509 workers

whose injuries ranged from $0.27 to less than $100. And, the record discloses that

the jury in returning only a single gross amount of damages verdict, as instructed,

discounted plaintiffs' evidence by more than half, likely indicating thatmore than half

of the putative class suffered either no damages or only a de minimisinjury measured

in cents rather than dollars. In spite of having the burden of proof, there was no

evidence adduced byplaintiffs that established the number of purported class member

employees fully compensated or not fully compensated by the K-Code payments

already paid by Tyson. It is evident, however, that many class employees fit within

each category and all were apparently included as beneficiaries of the single damages

verdict returned by the jury.

Rule 23(a)(2) contemplates that "there are questions of law or fact common to

the class." "Commonality requiresthe plaintiffto demonstrate that the class members

have suffered the same injury. This does not mean merely that they have all suffered

a violation of the same provision of law." Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at 2551 (quotation and

citation omitted). Rather, "[t]heir claims must depend upon a common contention. 

. . . . That common contention, moreover, must be of such a nature that it is capable

of class-wide resolution–which means that determination of its truth or falsity will

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resolve an issue that is central to the validity of each one of the claims in one stroke." 

Id. "What matters to class certification . . . is not the raising of common 'questions'

. . . but, rather the capacity of a class-wide proceeding to generate common answers

apt to drive the resolution of the litigation." Id. (first alteration and italics in original)

(quotation omitted). That was not the case here. While it is true that all class

members were subject to a common policy–gang-time payment–there is no "common

answer," arising from the evidence concerning the individual overtime pay questions

at issue in this case. Thus, this case with these classes cannot be resolved in "one

stroke," given the differences in donning and doffing times, K-Code payments,

abbreviated gang time shifts, absenteeism, sickness, vacation and a myriad of other

relevant factors. The "rigorous" analysis of class certification in this case, which

overlaps with the merits as required by Dukes, 131 S. Ct. at 2551, clearly discloses

that the Rule 23 class claim does not comply with either rule or precedent and should

have been decertified.

Finally, the wisdom of the Supreme Court's statement in Symczyk, 133 S. Ct.

at 1520, that Rule 23 class actions and collective actions under the FLSA are

fundamentally different and thus do not lend themselves to inextricably intertwined

trials, as here, is well dramatized by this case. Here we have undifferentiated 8

In footnotes 3 and 4, the court again takes issue with this contention. 

8

Interestingly, in doing so, the court cites Symczyk, a case that clearly holds to the

contrary. In Symczyk, the Supreme Court, in discussing an FLSA mootness issue and

the applicability, or not, of Rule 23 class action cases to that particular question,

stated: "Rule 23 actions are fundamentally different from collective actions under the

FLSA." 133 S. Ct. at 1529. And then more to the point here, the Supreme Court held

that although a putative class acquires "independent legal status once it is certified

under Rule 23[, u]nder the FLSA, by contrast, 'conditional certification' does not

produce a class with an independent legal status, or join additional parties to the

action. The sole consequence of conditional certification is the sending of courtapproved notification to employees." Id. at 1530. Thus, the FLSA class in this case

never progressed beyond "conditional" status and could not, as a matter of law, have

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presentations of evidence, including significant numbers of the putative classes

suffering no injury and members of the entire classes suffering wide variations in

damages, ultimately resulting in a single-sum class-wide verdict from which each

purported class member, damaged or not, will receive a pro-rata portion of the jury's

one-figure verdict. Assuming that the district court could now re-open the

proceedings in an effort to deal with an individual plaintiff's damages using the

Mericle/Fox evidence, the exercise would be laborious, virtually unguided, and well

outside of the limiting parameters the Supreme Court has, as a matter of law, placed

upon use of the Rule 23 class action machinery.

III. CONCLUSION

From this result, I dissent.

______________________________

been joined with the supposed Rule 23 class in an actionable claim of any kind,

however the parties may have chosen to treat this conditional effort, which treatment

is unclear from the record.

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