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Timestamp: 2019-04-22 04:43:57+00:00

Document:
FindACase | Clark v. Strad Energy Services USA, Ltd.
Clark v. Strad Energy Services USA, Ltd.
STRAD ENERGY SERVICES, USA, LTD., a Colorado corporation, and STRAD OILFIELD SERVICES, INC., a Colorado corporation, Defendants.
William J. Martínez United States District Judge.
Currently before the Court is Plaintiff's Motion for Approval of a Hoffman-La Roche Notice (“the Motion”). (ECF No. 40.) Plaintiff seeks to have this matter conditionally certified as a collective action under the FLSA for certain current and former employees who worked for either Defendant from May 22, 2014 to present. (Id. at 5.) Defendants sought several extensions of time to file a response to the Motion. Ultimately, the parties instead filed a Joint Stipulation Regarding Plaintiff's Motion for Approval of Hoffman-LaRoche Notice (“Joint Stipulation”). (ECF No. 65.) At the Court's request, the parties subsequently filed a revised Joint Proposed FLSA Notice (“Revised Notice”). (ECF No. 66.) For the reasons explained below, Plaintiff's Motion, as modified by the Revised Notice, is granted.
The FLSA permits collective actions where the allegedly aggrieved employees are “similarly situated.” 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). Whether employees are similarly situated is judged in two stages: a preliminary or “notice stage” (at issue here) and then a more searching, substantive stage, usually after the close of discovery. Thiessen v. Gen. Elec. Capital Corp., 267 F.3d 1095, 1102-03, 1105 (10th Cir. 2001). At the notice stage, a plaintiff requires “nothing more than substantial allegations that the putative [collective action] members were together the victims of a single decision, policy, or plan.” Id. at 1102 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Boldozier v. Am. Family Mut. Ins. Co., 375 F.Supp.2d 1089, 1092 (D. Colo. 2005) (applying Thiessen). The standard for certification at this stage is a lenient one. See Thiessen, 267 F.3d at 1103; Williams v. Sprint/United Management Co., 222 F.R.D. 483, 485 (D. Kan. 2004).
If a plaintiff meets this standard, the Court may order the defendant to provide contact information for employees that may be eligible to participate in the collective action, and may approve a form of notice to be sent to all of those individuals. See Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. v. Sperling, 493 U.S. 165, 169-74 (1989). Such notice is usually required because, unlike class actions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, collective actions under the FLSA require a party to opt in rather than opt out. See 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) (“No employee shall be a party plaintiff to any [collective] 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.”). Obviously current or former employees cannot opt in if they do not know about the pending action.

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