Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/236/793/511018/
Timestamp: 2020-01-17 17:09:55
Document Index: 531241985

Matched Legal Cases: ['§4117', '§ 4117', '§ 785', '§ 201', '§ 207', '§ 203', '§785', '§ 207', '§207', '§ 207', '§553', '§ 207', '§ 207', '§ 213', '§ 213', '§ 207', '§207', '§553', '§ 207', '§ 207', '§ 207', '§ 213', '§ 207', '§ 207']

Lonnie Brock, et al., Plaintiffs-appellees/cross-appellants, v. City of Cincinnati; John Shirey, City Manager, Defendants-appellants/cross-appellees, 236 F.3d 793 (6th Cir. 2001) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Sixth Circuit › 2001 › Lonnie Brock, et al., Plaintiffs-appellees/cross-appellants, v. City of Cincinnati; John Shirey, Cit...
Lonnie Brock, et al., Plaintiffs-appellees/cross-appellants, v. City of Cincinnati; John Shirey, City Manager, Defendants-appellants/cross-appellees, 236 F.3d 793 (6th Cir. 2001)
US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit - 236 F.3d 793 (6th Cir. 2001) Argued: September 19, 2000Decided and Filed: January 19, 2001
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio at Cincinnati. No. 97-00134, Herman J. Weber, District Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
Before: BOGGS, SUHRHEINRICH, and GIBSON, Circuit Judges* .
Apart from these suggested limitations, canine handlers and their families enjoy a highly trained family pet largely at City expense. For years before the Supreme Court held the FLSA applicable to state and local governments, see generally Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Trans. Auth., 469 U.S. 528 (1985), Cincinnati provided Canine Unit members a variety of benefits not given to other officers. Two ordinary working days per 28-day cycle are devoted to training, and officers get one eight-hour "dog day" per 28-day period, which is a day's worth of compensatory time to cover the off-duty, otherwise uncompensated, time spent caring for the dog. A canine officer has no out-of-pocket expenses associated with the dog: the Police Division pays for food and veterinary care and builds a professional-style kennel at the officer's home so that the dog can spend time in the weather developing a suitable coat. Officers are assigned a take-home, specialized police cruiser that they can use for any police-related activity1 . Finally, the officers regularly travel to police dog competitions, sometimes at City expense and often while on duty, to show their dogs and meet with handlers from around the country.
The handlers did not make the City or the police administration privy to their concerns during these negotiations. Under Ohio law, represented employees cannot bargain directly with their employers. See Ohio Rev. Code §4117.11(B) (3). Ohio law likewise requires public employers to deal with certified collective bargaining units and forbids them from dealing directly with employees. See Ohio Rev. Code §§ 4117.04(B), 4117.11(A) (5). The plaintiffs recognize that they should have raised any concerns about their compensation with their FOP representatives so that the union could address the administration on their behalf.
Cincinnati and the FOP negotiate CBAs approximately every other year. The first contract to memorialize the Canine Unit's special compensation, the 1995-96 agreement, contained 33 sections dealing with benefits for FOP members in addition to ordinary wages. Section 32 specified additional pay for Canine Unit members in the amount of four hours of straight-time pay per 14-day period, essentially converting the "dog day" previously allowed every 28 days to the CBA's 14-day cycle. In a subsequent round of negotiations, the FOP sought an increase in only one of seven special pay categories, that for the Motorcycle Unit. The district court found that, " [a]t no time during the negotiations for the '97-'98 labor agreement was the issue of canine compensation raised."
A few weeks after the '97-'98 negotiations ended, the officers filed a complaint seeking damages for violations of the FLSA. The district court denied cross-motions for summary judgment. Following a bench trial, the trial judge issued findings of fact and conclusions of law from the bench and later filed an order of judgment in favor of ten plaintiffs, awarding compensatory damages for the two years preceding the lawsuit and a matching amount of liquidated damages. Two Canine Unit members did not prevail, and all plaintiffs appealed2 .
Cincinnati's motion for summary judgment argued that the parties had reached a reasonable agreement as to work performed at home, which 29 C.F.R. § 785.23 recognizes as binding. The district court considered the question of whether the agreement was "reasonable" as intensely factual, because the regulation specifies that a "reasonable agreement" must "take [] into consideration all of the pertinent facts." The court noted that the plaintiffs' opposing memorandum argued that the amount actually paid under the agreement (2 hours per week) "bears no rational relationship to the amount of time Plaintiffs actually spend caring for their canine partners." Further, " [s]ignificant questions remained as to ...whether all the time [Plaintiffs] claim to have expended on canine care was reasonably necessary to promote Defendants' interests."After the bench trial, the court issued findings of fact and conclusions of law. In reviewing FLSA caselaw, the district court appeared to reach the following conclusion:
The issue basically boils down to whether the unilateral decision of the City to pay from the beginning the two hours per week or eight hours per 28 [-day] period was a reasonable analysis. I've pointed out that the City had absolute in my opinion authority to limit the amount of time and the amount of work they wanted their canine officers to spend or work with these dogs. The City did not exercise that right. . . . It is uncontroverted that the efforts [the officers] put forth to and for and on behalf of the dogs is necessary and is an appropriate part of their work and is compensable. This brings us to the crux of the case. What is a reasonable-- I guess maybe to put it this way: What did these officers do as a result of their work with these dogs and what did these officers do because of their love for the dogs and their concern and care of the dogs for their own benefit.
The court then determined that any information transmitted to the City about the time expended by the handlers would have come through Captain Cotton, who for many years commanded the Canine Unit, screened applicants, and trained its members, both human and canine. "Captain Cotton has testified and the [district] Court accept [ed] that one hour a day in addition to the-- one hour a day as overtime on work days and one-and-a-half hour per day on non-work days. The Court adopt [ed] this evidence as the fair and reasonable and proper and permitted time of work as overtime to which these officers were entitled. The Court [found] that the agreement that appears in the collective bargaining contract is not reasonable." F&C at 380. The court found that "the amounts testified to over and above that which [it] found that the City should have reasonably known about, the hour and hour-and-a-half, were done primarily for the personal care of the dogs on behalf of the individuals and not because of the requirements of the employer, that they were done to accommodate the love and affection that the officers obviously have for their dogs. . . . Therefore, the majority of the time that the officers spend caring for these dogs is out of their love and affection for the pets, for the dogs, and not as a requirement for their-- by their employer." F&C at 382-83.
The Fifth Circuit has enunciated a similar rule, noting that it comports with Fed. R. Civ. P. 52 ("Findings of fact, whether based on oral or documentary evidence, shall not be set aside unless clearly erroneous."). As the Fifth Circuit observed, " [T]he Supreme Court specifically considered a claim for exemptions from the FLSA in Icicle Seafoods, Inc. v. Worthington, 475 U.S. 709 (1986), and stated that 'the facts necessary to a proper determination of the legal questionwhether an exemption to the FLSA applies in a particular case should be reviewed by the court of appeals pursuant to Rule 52(a), like the facts in other civil bench-tried litigation in federal courts.' Worthington, 106 S. Ct. at 1529." Brock, 826 F.2d at 371-72 (emphasis added). Accordingly, we will review the district court's underlying findings of fact for clear error but review de novo the district court's application to those facts of the legal standards contained in statutes, regulations, and caselaw.
Plaintiffs claim that the City under-compensated them in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq. Section 207(a) (1) declares, "Except as otherwise provided in this section, no employer shall employ any of his employees . . . for a workweek longer than forty hours unless such employee receives compensation for his employment in excess of the hours above specified at a rate not less than one and one-half-times the regular rate at which he is employed." 29 U.S.C. § 207(a) (1)3 . The Supreme Court interpreted the FLSA in the seminal case of Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, and regarded these provisions "as necessarily indicativeof a Congressional intention to guarantee either regular or overtime compensation for all actual work or employment." Tennessee Coal, Iron & R.R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590, 597 (1944). The term of art "work," which includes "to suffer or permit to work," 29 U.S.C. § 203(g), means "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." Muscoda, 321 U.S. at 598. Even work performed off-duty can qualify as work and entitle an employee to compensation under the FLSA. See Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 256 (1944) (holding that employees must be compensated for "activities performed either before or after the regular work shift . . . if those activities are an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered [employees] are employed").
The district court in Holzapfel went similarly astray when it instructed the jury to determine whether the plaintiff "'spent additional time, over and above the 40 hours of regular time plus 2 hours of overtime per week for which he was compensated, in performing work which was . . . reasonably necessary to fulfill his duties of feeding, grooming, caring for, and training the K-9 unit dog assigned to him . . . .'" Holzapfel, 145 F.3d at 520 (quoting the district court's jury instructions) (emphasis added). The Second Circuit determined that the "reasonable time necessary to complete a task" standard relied on by the district court in formulating the jury charge originated in a Tenth Circuit case. The analysis and holding in that case was designed to prevent employees from collecting overtime for tasks on which they could spend an inordinate amount of time because the employees had "'considerable flexibility and personal discretion with regard to the time and speed [at which] these activities took place.'" See id. at 526 (quoting Reich v. IBP, Inc., 38 F.3d 1123, 1127 (10th Cir. 1994)). The Second Circuit rejected the "reasonable time" standard as a possible substitute for a direct finding on how much "work" officers performed because the "individual traits and needs of officers and animals preclude any easy determination as to what is a 'reasonable time' for a K-9 officer to take care of his dog." Ibid. Although the district court here recited the Second Circuit's holding that " [a] reasonableness standard is inappropriate in deciding how many overtime hours for which a K-9 officer should be compensated," see F&C at 371 (quoting Holzapfel, 145 F.3d at 516), the hour-to-hour-and-a-half finding appears to be just that: a determination of what is a reasonable amount of time. Reasonableness, the Second Circuit noted and we today hold, is appropriate only in evaluating agreements concerning work to be performed and the compensation therefor.See Holzapfel, 145 F.3d at 526-27. Courts should not inquire into the reasonableness of the amount of work employees actually performed or determine what would have been a reasonable amount of work for an employer to seek and an employee to perform.
Answering the second question with reference to its resolution of the first, the district court determined, " [T]he amounts testified to over and above that which I have found that the City should have reasonably known about, the hour and hour-and-a-half, were done primarily for the personal care of the dogs on behalf of the individuals and not because of the requirements of the employer . . . ." F&C at 382. This finding's dependence on the district court's inappropriate "reasonable time" calculation vitiates much of its value. Ordinarily, this stage of the analysis would require courts to determine what portion of time spent with the dogs-- including feeding, playing, watching television, petting, and all the ordinary activities owners engage in with their pets-- necessarily and primarily benefitted the City. Examining the minutiae of how long it takes to feed a dog or clean up after it is difficult enough, but determining whether a dog got a treat or a pet or a scratch primarily for the benefit of the City of Cincinnati borders on (and may exceed) the limits of the absurd. Thankfully, for purposes of discussion, we may borrow from the district court's flawed "reasonable time" finding and assume that the officers exerted themselves in activities that were necessarily and primarily for the benefit of their employer for one hour on workdays and one-and-a-half-hours on non-workdays.
The district court found the handlers' efforts a "necessary and . . . an appropriate part of their work . . ., " F&C at 378, but such finding does not clearly resolve the third question, which asks whether the officers' off-duty efforts were an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities of their employment. Although the question is subject to debate, the Second Circuit has held that "walking, feeding, training, grooming, and cleaning up are integral and indispensable parts of the handler's principal activities and are compensable as work." New York City Transit Auth., 45 F.3d at 651. Likewise, although the plaintiffs in Rudolph conceded that dog care amounted to only a small part of their total work as officers, the Eighth Circuit implicitly held that dog care meets the FLSA definition of "work." See Rudolph, 103 F.3d at 681-82; see also Karr v. City of Beaumont, 950 F. Supp. 1317, 1322-23 (E.D. Tex. 1997) (holding as a matter of law that post-shift time spent caring for dogs is a principal activity); Andrews v. DuBois, 888 F. Supp. 213, 217 (D. Mass. 1995) (determining that feeding, grooming, and walking are indispensable parts of maintaining dogs as law enforcement tools, that such activities are closely related to the duties of a canine officer,and that therefore, such time is spent "working").
The Rudolph court deemed the rationale for having the "reasonable agreement as to home 'work'" rule particularly germane to canine handler cases. See Rudolph, 103 F.3d at 681. Noting that the "employer cannot easily determine how long the officers work at home caring for the dogs," the court observed that " [t]he indeterminate nature of these tasks . . . makes them exactly the sort of work as to which it makes sense for the parties to come to an agreement, to eliminate complicated, repetitious, and hard-to-resolve disputes about exactly how much time it took to take care of the dogs each day." Ibid. And the Rudolph court did not even mention the added complexity of sorting out how much of the time spent feeding, grooming, exercising, and playing with the dogs was expended necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer. With difficult factual problems swirling around both the issue of what amounts to FLSA "work" and the monitoring and calculation of time spent on such "work," we regard the §785.23 reasonable agreement provision as doubly appropriate in canine handler cases. Cf. Holzapfel, 145 F.3d at 527 (viewing agreements as the best solution to the overtime problem presented by canine-handler cases and encouraging their use); accord New York City Transit Auth., 45 F.3d at 647 n.1 (noting that the Department of Labor and the Transit Authority had reached an agreement to amend the CBA to compensate handlers). As the Second Circuit remarked, sound policy considerations also counsel in favor of agreements between the parties. See Holzapfel, 145 F.3d at 5275 .
While the Rudolph plaintiffs insisted that the employer knew or had reason to know that they performed work for the employer's benefit beyond that provided for in the agreement, the court deemed the employer entitled to rely on the plaintiffs to follow the clear terms of their agreement and held that the employer neither suffered nor permitted additional expenditures of time7 . The court held, "It is not enough for plaintiffs to show that they worked more than agreed. They must show that the agreement provided an unreasonably short amount of time to perform the assigned tasks" that constitute FLSA work. Ibid. The plaintiffs there failed to do so because they presented "no evidence that a reasonable employer would necessarily have known that half an hour per . . . day was too short a time to perform the tasks [the employer] told the officers to perform." Ibid.
As the Supreme Court observed, " [a]ny custom or contract falling short of [compensation for all work or employment engaged in by employees], like an agreement to pay less than the minimum wage requirements, cannot be utilized to deprive employees of their statutory rights." Muscoda, 321 U.S. at 597. Accordingly, if the parties' agreement here violated the officers' established FLSA rights, the courts cannot enforce it regardlessof its reasonableness. As described above, the parties agreed that the officers would be paid straight time for two hours per week beyond their standard 40 hours of "on duty" time. In terms of the analysis above, the parties agreed on how much "work" the officers performed, which includes the difficult component questions of whether their exertions were required or suffered by Cincinnati, necessarily and primarily for the City's benefit, and an integral part of their employment as canine handlers. As the Seventh Circuit held, " [E]mployers and employees may resolve whether certain activity is 'work' through a collective bargaining agreement, as long as the agreement comports with the FLSA." Leahy, 96 F.3d at 232. Thus, if paying the officers at the straight-time rate for those two hours per week violated the FLSA, the officers can recover overtime for that "work."
In directing the parties to calculate damages, the district court instructed that the first 2.75 hours per week beyond the standard 40-hour week should be deemed straight time because 29 U.S.C. § 207(k) contains an exception from §207(a) that permits law enforcement agencies to pay straight time over a slightly longer week than ordinary employers can use. Section 207(k) authorizes the Department of Labor to promulgate regulations specifying the maximum allowable amount of straight time. Under those provisions, police agencies must pay overtime only when employees work "tours of duty which in the aggregate exceed" 171 hours in a 28-day work period or 86 hours in a 14-day period, which break down to maximum workweeks of 42.75 and 43 hours, respectively. 29 U.S.C. § 207(k) (1); 29 C.F.R. §§553.201(a), 553.230 The district court directed that the judgment consider as straight time the two hours per week paid under the dog day provision, which the officers have always collected at the straight-time rate. The first .75 hours of the previously unpaid six hours per week that the district court ordered the City pay the officers would also be straight time compensation. The City owed the officers pay at the overtime rate for only the remaining 5.25 hours per week.
The Supreme Court stated, " [T]he application of an exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act is a matter of affirmative defense on which the employer has the burden of proof." Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, 417 U.S. 188, 196-97 (1974) (citing Supreme Court cases). The City's witness and the officers' brief described § 207(k) as creating an exemption for law enforcement agencies. To be precise, § 207(k) creates at best a partial "exemption" by slightly extending the permissible workweek for which law enforcement agencies can compensate their officers at the straight-time rate. In any event, "exemption" is hardly a talismanic term that can force a court's hand and prevent it from applying the law as set forth by Congress.
Section 207(k) does not-- as the § 213 exemptions discussed in Corning Glass Works and all of the cases cited therein do-- totally remove certain categories of employees from the record-keeping and overtime provisions of the FLSA. See, e.g., 29 U.S.C. § 213(a) (1) (exempting employees employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity), 213(a) (3) (exempting certain employees employed by an establishment which is an amusement or recreational establishment, organized camp, or religious or non-profiteducational conference center), 213(a) (5) (exempting any employee employed in the catching, taking, propagating, harvesting, cultivating, or farming of any kind of fish, shellfish, crustacea, sponges, seaweeds, or other aquatic forms of animal and vegetable life). Instead, § 207(k) contains a declaratory statement that adjusts the permissible length of the workweek but does not completely remove specified employees from the FLSA's protection: "No public agency shall be deemed to have violated subsection (a) of this section with respect to employment of any employee in fire protection activities or any employee in law enforcement activities (including security personnel in correctional institutions) if . . . in a work period of 28 consecutive days the employee receives for tours of duty which in the aggregate exceed [171 hours] compensation at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed." 29 U.S.C. §207(k) (1); 29 C.F.R. §§553.201(a), 553.230.
The provisions of § 207(k) stand as Congress's statement of the maximum workweek for law enforcement officers. The provision's applicability to a given case is a matter of law dictated by § 207(a) itself, see 29 U.S.C. § 207(a) (stating, " [e]xcept as otherwise provided in this section. . . ."), rather than an "exemption" in the nature of those in § 213(a), which employers must plead and carry the burden of proving apply to particular employees. See Corning Glass Works, 417 U.S. at 196-97. This court has previously held that a district court has discretion to consider an argument concerning the applicability of § 207(k) even if the argument was not presented in a timely fashion, see Featsent v. City of Youngstown, 70 F.3d 900, 906 (6th Cir. 1995), implicitly holding that a defendant need not raise § 207(k) in its pleadings. The officers have not claimed, and we decline to hold, that the district court abused its discretion in entertaining the City's argument, however unorthodox its initial presentation to the court was.
Captain Cotton admitted that canine handlers occasionally discussed whether 17 minutes per day, the daily value of the "dog day," is sufficient to maintain the dogs off-duty. See T. at 285 (Cotton testimony). Cotton agreed with the handlers that 17 minutes was not sufficient compensation for the at-home care and maintenance of the canines. See T. at 288 (Cotton testimony). In response to a question from the bench, Cotton commented that off-duty days involved more at-home work than on-duty days, because, " [t]here's some grooming and exercising that you can do [on] duty. Therefore, if you're off duty, they would have to be done on your own time." T. at 300 (Cotton testimony). When asked if any canine handlers had ever told him what they thought the adequate amount of time should be for their compensation, Cotton replied, "I think we came to a general conclusion about an hour, an hour-and-a-half per day." T. at 279 (Cotton testimony).