Source: https://casetext.com/case/in-re-family-dollar-flsa-litigation-37
Timestamp: 2019-03-19 19:25:21
Document Index: 497406373

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 213', '§ 207', '§ 216', '§ 207', '§ 213', '§ 541', '§ 541', '§ 541', '§ 541', '§ 213', '§ 216']

Grace v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc, 637 F.3d 508 | Casetext
637 F.3d 508 (4th Cir. 2011)
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Gracev.Family Dollar Stores, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth CircuitMar 22, 2011
ARGUED: Robert L. Wiggins, Jr., Wiggins, Childs, Quinn Pantazis, PC, Birmingham, Alabama, for Appellants. Robert Allen Long, Jr., Covington Burling, LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Gregory O. Wiggins, Wiggins, Childs, Quinn Pantazis, PC, Birmingham, Alabama; Robert E. DeRose, Katherine A. Stone, Barkan Neff Handelman Meizlish, LLP, Columbus, Ohio; Gregory L. Jones, Greg Jones Associates, PA, Wilmington, North Carolina, for Appellants. Mark W. Mosier, Covington Burling, LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellee.
Before NIEMEYER and KING, Circuit Judges, and PATRICK MICHAEL DUFFY, Senior United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, sitting by designation.
Irene Grace, a former store manager for Family Dollar Stores, Inc., who worked 50-65 hours per week and was paid a fixed salary plus bonus, commenced this action against Family Dollar under the Fair Labor Standards Act for overtime wages. While Family Dollar treated Grace as an executive exempt from overtime pay requirements under 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1), Grace argues that she was not subject to this exemption because she devoted the vast majority of her time to nonexecutive tasks and therefore should be paid wages on the basis of a 40-hour work week plus overtime, as required by 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). She seeks relief on behalf of herself and other employees similarly situated.
Grace reported to a district manager, who was responsible for 17 stores and who, she stated, visited her store once every two to three weeks. In operating her store, Grace regularly performed all the tasks necessary for the operation of her store. In addition, she supervised all operations. She handled disputes among employees; handled customer complaints; marked down inventory; established employee schedules; trained and disciplined employees; made personnel recommendations to the district manager, who followed those recommendations 95% of the time; and took care of deposits and paperwork for the store. She explained that her job required that she "multi-task," such that while she performed nonmanagerial tasks, she was also functioning as a manager, which required that she watch out for possible theft by customers, train other employees, and perform other managerial tasks.
In May 2004, Grace commenced this action on behalf of herself and other employees similarly situated, filing her action in the Middle District of Georgia. Family Dollar moved to strike the collective-action allegations and also to transfer the case to the Western District of North Carolina, where Family Dollar was headquartered and where similar cases were pending. The district court in the Middle District of Georgia transferred Grace's action to the Western District of North Carolina where it became part of the "Family Dollar FLSA Multidistrict Litigation."
The district court, in a ruling dated September 6, 2007, denied Grace's motion for preliminary certification as a collective action to facilitate notice to potential plaintiffs. Nonetheless, 74 plaintiffs opted to join Grace's collective action, pursuant to 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). In denying a preliminary certification in Grace's case, the court concluded that any nonexecutive duties performed by store managers were not the result of Family Dollar policy but rather the decisions of individual store managers. It concluded, "This Court cannot assume that every store manager at Family Dollar spent a majority of their time doing non-managerial tasks. Such a declaration would require an individualized evaluation of each plaintiff." The court concluded that "[g]iven the variation in duties among managers in different stores, the pleadings do not meet the standard of commonality needed for this Court to find that Plaintiffs are similarly situated."
We review orders granting summary judgment de novo, applying the same standard that the district court was required to apply. See Detrick v. Panalpina, Inc., 108 F.3d 529, 536 (4th Cir. 1997). Of course, summary judgment is appropriate only if the moving party shows that "there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and [that] the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a). A movant may defeat a motion for summary judgment by demonstrating that a genuine issue of material fact exists by referencing matters in the record, including depositions and affidavits. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). But it cannot create a dispute about a fact that is contained in deposition testimony by referring to a subsequent affidavit of the deponent contradicting the deponent's prior testimony, for "it is well established that a genuine issue of fact is not created where the only issue of fact is to determine which of the two conflicting versions of a party's testimony is correct." Erwin v. United States, 591 F.3d 313, 325 n. 7 (4th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted) (quoting Halperin v. Abacus Tec. Corp., 128 F.3d 191, 198 (4th Cir. 1997)); see also Waste Mgmt. Holdings, Inc. v. Gilmore, 252 F.3d 316, 341 (4th Cir. 2001); Rohrbough v. Wyeth Labs., Inc., 916 F.2d 970, 975-76 (4th Cir. 1990); Barwick v. Celotex Corp., 736 F.2d 946, 960 (4th Cir. 1984). As we explained in Barwick,
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that an employee receive overtime pay if she works more than 40 hours in any workweek. 29 U.S.C. § 207(a). The statute, however, exempts from this requirement "any employee employed in a bona fide executive . . . capacity." 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1). The Department of Labor has, for the relevant period, promulgated two sets of regulations interpreting the scope of the executive exemption, one of which applied before August 2004, and the other, after August 2004. Because Grace's claim covers the period from 1996 to October 2004, it is governed, in differing degrees, by both pre-2004 and post-2004 regulations. But the application of the different regulations is not material to the outcome of this case.
Under the pre-2004 regulations, an employee who earns more than $250 per week qualifies as an executive if (1) her primary duty consists of the management of the enterprise and (2) includes the customary and regular direction of two or more other employees. 29 C.F.R. § 541.119(a) (pre-2004). The post-2004 regulations provide that an employee is an executive if: (1) she is compensated at a rate of at least $455; (2) her primary duty is management; (3) she customarily and regularly directs the work of two or more other employees; and (4) she has the authority to hire or fire other employees or her suggestions and recommendations as to the hiring, firing, advancement, promotion, or any other change of status of other employees are given particular weight. 29 C.F.R. § 541.100(a) (2004). Thus, the 2004 regulations include the pre-2004 factors and add factor (4).
As to factor (3), Grace did in fact customarily and regularly direct the work of two or more other employees. An employee directs the work of two or more employees if her subordinates work 80 hours or more per week, and she directs the work of those employees "customarily and regularly" if the "frequency [is] greater than occasional but . . . may be less than constant." 29 C.F.R. § 541.701 (2004). Grace testified that the number of employees at her store ranged from three to five and that she always had at least two cashiers. An employee for Family Dollar testified that Grace's subordinates worked 80 or more hours per week during 89.23% of the weeks that she was a store manager. And Grace testified that she directed the work of these employees, stating that one of her "primary tasks and functions as a successful store manager" was to "train [employees] and manage them." When employees did not perform a required task, they would have to answer to Grace, who also engaged the employees in counseling and coaching to ensure that they performed their tasks as necessary. Explaining why she had low turnover in her store, Grace testified, "I tried to teach the people what I knew to make the store run smoothly. I always took pride in the store, and I wanted them to take pride in the store."
And as to factor (4), Grace testified that her district manager followed her employee recommendations and evaluations at least 95% of the time, and thus her suggestions regarding the hiring of employees were given significant weight. She also testified that she could fire employees and did so on at least one occasion. As she explained, she had a "stock guy that was constantly late to work, didn't show up. So one day I just met him at the door and told him we didn't need him any more after he had just not come to work."
Grace contends that because 99% of her time was devoted to nonexecutive duties, at least a genuine issue of material fact exists about whether she was an executive, precluding the entry of summary judgment against her. She asserts that most of her time involved "putting out freight, running a cash register, doing the schematics and doing janitorial work." She argues that the district court erred in not giving her an inference that "spending 99% of her time on non-managerial duties precluded her managing the store." She claims that "there comes a point when the degree of manual labor approaches 80-90% of the plaintiffs time that a genuine issue of material fact as to her `primary duty' is created by that fact alone." In response to the district court's conclusion that she performed managerial tasks and nonmanagerial tasks concurrently, she argues that "she performed few concurrent managerial duties because she had none to begin with."
Family Dollar contends that Grace's argument essentially ignores the fact that she performed exempt and nonexempt work concurrently. While Family Dollar acknowledges that Grace devoted extensive time to nonexecutive tasks, the federal regulations governing whether Grace's primary duty was management direct that the court look at all relevant factors. In this case Family Dollar argues that Grace "exercised discretion and judgment on a daily basis," relating to every aspect of management in the store. It pointed out that Grace had to adopt employee schedules to fit the needs of her store, including the staffing of different shifts. Ultimately, Grace considered her most important task to be "serving customers and trying to make the store profitable," quintessentially a management task. Family Dollar notes that Grace accomplished her goals by creating loyal, repeat customers; training employees; and focusing on inventory and payroll.
First, with respect to the amount of time spent performing managerial duties, Grace claims that because she spent such a large portion of her time doing nonmanagerial work, this factor cannot be satisfied. But the regulation explains that time alone "is not the sole test, and in situations where the employee does not spend over 50 per cent of his time in managerial duties, he might nevertheless have management as his primary duty if the other pertinent factors support such a conclusion." 29 C.F.R. § 541.103 (pre-2004). More particularly, the Fair Labor Standards Act, recognizing the nature of retail business, exempts retail executives from the requirement that the majority of their hours be spent on executive functions. 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1) ("[A]n employee of a retail or service establishment shall not be excluded from the definition of employee employed in a bona fide executive or administrative capacity because of the number of hours in his workweek which he devotes to activities not directly or closely related to the performance of executive or administrative activities"). There is no per se rule that once the amount of time spent on manual labor approaches a certain percentage, satisfaction of this factor is precluded as a matter of law. See Thomas v. Speedway SuperAmerica, LLC, 506 F.3d 496, 504 (6th Cir. 2007) ("[T]he time factor . . . might even be somewhat misleading where the employee's management and nonmanagement functions are [not] . . . clearly severable") (internal quotation marks omitted) (second bracket and ellipses in original) (quoting Donovan v. Burger King Corp., 672 F.2d 221, 226 (1st Cir. 1982)); see also Haines v. Southern Retailers, Inc., 939 F.Supp. 441, 449 (E.D.Va. 1996) ("[A] number of federal courts have `disregarded the time factor . . . where the manager is in charge of a separate facility such as a convenience store or restaurant chain'") (quoting Meyer v. Worsley Co., Inc., 881 F.Supp. 1014, 1020 (E.D.N.C. 1994)).
In this case, Grace was in charge of a separate retail store, seeking to make it profitable. While she catalogs the non-managerial jobs that she had to do, claiming that they occupied most of her time, she does so without recognizing that during 100% of the time, even while doing those jobs, she was also the person responsible for running the store. Indeed, there was no one else to do so, and it cannot be rationally assumed, nor does the record support a claim, that the store went without management 99% of the time. Grace also fails to acknowledge the importance of performing nonmanagerial tasks in a manner that could make the store profitable, the goal of her managerial responsibility.
We accept Grace's deposition testimony to determine the nature of her work for Family Dollar. She testified that she had the responsibility for making a profit and that she made a profit by "controlling inventory, controlling payroll, controlling the things that you ordered, like your store supplies and — because all of that came off — off of the top"; "controlling, you know, anything in the store, damages, make sure there was no accidents — accident loss or — safety." Grace recognized that her exercise of judgment and decisions on a day-to-day basis affected customer loyalty and satisfaction, as well as profits. She concluded, "I always took pride in the store, and I wanted them [the employees] to take pride in the store. . . . I treated people the way I wanted to be treated, with respect. . . . I think a manager is a team leader, and if they're not leading that team, you're not going to have — you know, if the people come to work and they're not proud in your store and they're not proud in themselves or in their job, they're not going to do a good job." She explained that if they were not doing a good job and the store did not look good, the store would not have good profits.
Thus, while Grace performed nonmanagerial tasks around the store as she determined necessary, she concurrently performed the managerial duties of running the store. As she explained, "whether or not [she] happened to be putting up stock at a given moment or running a register or talking to a customer, at the same time [she was] responsible for making sure the whole store ran successfully." Similarly, she stated, "When [she was] running a cash register, [she was] at the same time looking at the condition of the front end and keep an eye out for theft, etc." She explained, "When [she was] doing [her] paperwork for [her] cash registers and [her] money, [she was] thinking about what had to be done later with regard to that money and all that paperwork for that and store deliveries." This multitasking — doing management jobs while doing nonexempt work — is explicitly recognized as a managerial duty by the Department of Labor's regulations, which describe the situation where a retail manager performs concurrent nonmanagement duties:
In short, whether Grace was simply standing around or stocking shelves, she remained responsible for addressing any problem that could arise and did arise during the course of the daily retail operations. As she testified at length, she alone had the responsibility for addressing complaints by employees, complaints by customers, damaged goods, nonreporting employees, customer theft, adequate staffing of cash registers — and the list continued extensively. In this context, it is misleading simply to add up the time that she spent unloading trucks, stocking inventory, running cash registers, or sweeping floors and conclude thereby that she was merely a clerk and not a manager. To be sure, each of these tasks was nonmanagerial, but she performed these tasks in the context of her overall responsibility to see that the store operated successfully and profitably, and they were important to fulfilling her goals and responsibilities. At bottom, Grace had the ultimate responsibility for operating the store profitably, and she did so successfully. As she testified plainly, "I ran the store when I was in the building," and, according to her, she was in the building most of the time, as she spent between 50 and 65 hours per week at the store.
Again with respect to the frequency with which Grace exercised discretion, it is apparent that she exercised discretion virtually every day and all day long. Every one of the day-to-day tasks involved judgment and discretion. How to handle a customer complaint or an employee complaint, how to adjust a schedule, how to arrange the stock in a manner that was pleasing, what task to address first, how to keep a mindful eye on shrinkage and breakage while at the same time satisfying customers — all involved discretionary acts inherent in being responsible for the successful operation of a retail store.
With respect to whether she was relatively free from supervision, she testified that she was subject to company policies and the company template for a store in the Family Dollar chain. She also stated that the district manager provided her with a quarterly budget and expected her to meet the budget, and that he visited her once every two to three weeks. On the other hand, apart from this supervision, which was not uncharacteristic for any retail operation, the district manager was not, as the district court observed, "a micro-manager who constantly was looking over her shoulder." Indeed the district manager had 17 stores to supervise, which would hardly permit him to micro-manage all 17.
Finally, considering the fifth factor, we look to the relationship between the store manager's salary and nonexempt employees' wages. Here, we consider two items, first, whether the manager earned more, in absolute terms, than nonmanagerial employees, and second, whether the manager was a "profit center," namely, whether the manager had the ability to influence the amount of her compensation. As to the first item, Grace earned significantly higher amounts on an hourly basis than nonexempt workers. The record shows that while hourly employees at Family Dollar earned an average wage of $5.81 per hour, during the same period Grace earned compensation which, when computed on an hourly basis, averaged between $9.62 and $12.02 per hour. In addition, Grace received annual bonuses of $1,000 or more, whereas none of the nonexempt Family Dollar employees received bonuses. As to the second item, Grace's store was also a "profit center," and her performance evaluation, salary, and bonus depended on her store's profitability. She maintained a profitable store, as she testified, because she took care of her store so that she had "loyal, repeat customers." She explained at some length that for the store to be profitable, she had to be a team leader; her employees had to be proud of the store; the store had to look good; and generally, the team had to do a good job.
Grace also argues that summary judgment in this case was inappropriate because of the decision in Morgan v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc., 551 F.3d 1233 (11th Cir. 2008). In that case, a group of Family Dollar managers brought suit under the Fair Labor Standards Act for Family Dollar's refusal to pay overtime wages to store managers, and, as here, Family Dollar asserted that the store managers were executive employees not subject to the requirement to pay overtime. The Eleventh Circuit, reviewing the district court's decision to certify a collective action, looked for the commonalities of the store managers' situations and concluded that the certification of a class by the district court fell within the district court's discretion. The court also concluded that the evidence in that case was sufficient to support the jury's verdict awarding overtime wages to store managers.
Just because a business classifies all employees in a particular job category as exempt does not mean that those employees are necessarily "similarly situated" for purposes of a 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) collective action. Rather, it is necessary to review the actual job duties of those in that job category to determine whether they are similarly situated and whether the exemption defense can be collectively litigated.