Opinion ID: 3015328
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Judicial Treatment of the MCA Exemption

Text: In the one MCA exemption case addressed by this court, the operative facts were far afield from those in the case at bar. In Friedrich v. U.S. Computer Services, 974 F.2d 409 (3d Cir. 1992), the employees contending that they were entitled to overtime pay were technicians providing installation, maintenance and repair services for cable television firms. In 23 carrying out their responsibilities, the technicians, headquartered in Pennsylvania, drove with their equipment and tools to customers located in Pennsylvania and in all the states bordering on Pennsylvania. Although the technicians generally drove their own vehicles, which weighed less than the “commercial vehicles” of over 10,000 pounds that the DOT had affirmatively undertaken to regulate, we concluded that the DOT’s nonexercise of its regulatory power did not undercut that power. Because the plaintiffs literally fell within the MCA exemption and neither Congress nor the DOT has taken action to the contrary, we hold that employees operating passenger automobiles in interstate activities which require them to transport property essential to their job duties come within the reach of the Federal Motor Carrier Act as amended and are therefore exempt from the FLSA’s overtime compensation requirements. Id. at 419. Thus, in Friedrich, unlike the case at bar, the employees were in fact driving interstate and doing so as a regular and 24 central dimension of their jobs. Moreover, their duties required them to transport property as well as themselves. In turning to decisions in other courts, it appears that, as a general matter, cases sustaining claims of MCA exemption from the FLSA overtime requirements involve patterns of distribution markedly unlike the ACCESS pattern. Typically, the carrier’s activity is a clearly identifiable element of an integrated interstate distribution system. Also, typically, the items the carrier is transporting are not passengers but freight. Back in 1947, in Morris v. McComb, 332 U.S. 422 (1947), a sharply divided Supreme Court held that truck drivers and mechanics employed by a Detroit carrier engaged in the transport of steel came within the MCA exemption. Four percent of the transport was “directly in interstate commerce”, id. at 427; the balance was (a) steel transported “largely within steel plants . . . for further processing . . . an unsegregated potion 25 of [which] was shipped ultimately in interstate commerce,” and (b) steel transported “between steel mills and industrial establishments . . . [and] used in connection with the manufacture of automobiles, a substantial portion of which entered interstate commerce.” Id. In referring to the 4% of the carrier’s operations which (unlike the operations of ACCESS) were “directly in interstate commerce,” the Court noted that the carrier, in order fully to serve its shippers, had “a practical situation such as may confront any common carrier engaged in a general cartage business, and who is prepared and offering to serve the normal transportation demands of the shipping public in an industrial metropolitan center.” Id. at 434. More recent instances in which claims of MCA exemption have been sustained are not dissimilar. For example, in Bilyou v. Dutchess Beer Distributors, Inc., 300 F.3d 217 (2d Cir. 2002), the Second Circuit found no FLSA protection for an 26 intrastate driver who drove empty beer bottles to a facility from which they were later shipped out of state. However, the Bilyou driver’s activities were part of a clearly integrated commercial cycle: the beer distributor received full bottles from out-of-state suppliers and distributed them to customers, the plaintiff driver picked up the empties and returned them to the distributor (though technically employed by a different company), and the distributor shipped them out of state and received credit for the returns. Id. at 220. Other cases like Bilyou similarly involve an integrated system of interstate shipments. See, e.g., Klitzke v. Steiner Corp., 110 F.3d 1465, 1470 (9th Cir. 1997) (involving local delivery driver for linen service that ordered roughly half of the materials it supplied from out-of-state suppliers, based on specific customers’ orders); Foxworthy v. Hiland Dairy Co., 997 F.2d 670, 672 (10th Cir. 1993) (involving Oklahoma truck driver who regularly delivered dairy products ordered from his 27 employer’s Arkansas plant to customers in Oklahoma); Beggs v. Kroger Co., 167 F.2d 700 (8th Cir. 1948) (involving truck drivers who regularly delivered merchandise - 89% of it from outside the state - to their employer’s retail groceries from its warehouse, and who returned empty bottles and unsold merchandise to the warehouse for shipment out of state). There is no general rule that once something (either passenger or freight) embarks on a journey that will eventually carry it between two states, every moment of that journey, through the last conceivable moment of travel, is necessarily interstate transport under the MCA. Although a mere shift from one carrier to another does not disrupt an otherwise-integrated interstate trip, see The Daniel Ball, 77 U.S. 557 (1871) (considering the limits of the powers of Congress), the Supreme Court has recognized that this does not mean that all portions of a trip including some interstate travel are necessarily integrated. 28 As Justice Brandeis remarked in Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern Railroad Co. v. Settle, 260 U.S. 166 (1922), whether a particular portion of travel is interstate or intrastate “depends on the essential character of the movement.” Id. at 170 (rejecting an interstate shipper’s attempt to pay lower total tariffs by shipping its goods first from one state into another, and then, after taking possession of them, re-shipping them to their ultimate destination in the latter state). The Court made clear in that case that the “essential character” of movement that determines incorporation into interstate transport depends on the individual facts of each case, and that mere proximity in time and space will not necessarily make an intrastate trip part of a larger interstate voyage. Id. at 173. Rather, the “essential character” of truly interstate transport will show some “essential continuity of movement.” Id. (emphasis added). 29 When we apply the “essential character of the movement” inquiry to the ACCESS drivers, it is clear that other cases applying the MCA exemption do not suggest the proper outcome here. The ACCESS drivers are not integrated into their passengers’ interstate travel to the degree in which many intrastate commercial drivers are integrated into the interstate movement of commercial goods. Indeed, the ACCESS service lacks any legal or institutional connection to the interstate movement of passengers or goods. Although the service’s pickup or drop-off point sometimes coincides in time and space with one endpoint of certain passengers’ interstate journeys, there is no well established logical or logistical connection between the two. The distinction between the “essential character” of the ACCESS drivers’ work and that of the commercial freight operations considered in other MCA exemption cases also 30 reflects broader differences in the usual commercial treatment of freight and passenger transportation. The Supreme Court has recognized in another context that “what may fairly be said to be the limits of an interstate shipment of goods and chattels may not necessarily be the commonly accepted limits of an individual’s interstate journey,” and that the courts “must accordingly mark the beginning and end of a particular kind of interstate commerce by its own practical considerations.” United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 332 U.S. 218, 231 (1947). In any event, unlike the delivery drivers in the cases canvassed above, the ACCESS drivers are not part of a clearly-defined, routine interstate commercial exchange controlled centrally by their employer. Because the cases considering the FLSA status of commercial freight drivers are factually unlike that presented here, we will look outside the array of cases applying the MCA 31 exemption to consider past judicial treatment, in other statutory contexts, of passenger transportation more similar to the ACCESS service.