Opinion ID: 4367046
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Back Wages Calculation

Text: Finally, ODPS challenges the district court’s calculation of back wages owed by ODPS to three workers. Due to ODPS’s inadequate recordkeeping, these calculations were based in part on inaccurate or incomplete records. In cases where an “employer’s records are inaccurate or inadequate . . . an employee has carried out his burden if he proves that he has in fact performed work for which he was improperly compensated and if he produces sufficient evidence to show the amount and extent of that work as a matter of just and reasonable inference.” U.S. Dep’t of Labor v. Cole Enterprises, Inc., 62 F.3d 775, 779 (6th Cir. 1995) (quoting Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S. at 687). Once the employee makes this showing, “[t]he burden then shifts to the employer to come forward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed or with evidence to negative the reasonableness of the inference to be drawn from the employee’s evidence.” Id. 5District courts examining § 211(c) have also found that it does not carry a knowledge requirement. See, e.g., Perez v. Oak Grove Cinemas, Inc., 68 F. Supp. 3d 1234, 1246 (D. Or. 2014) (holding that lack of intent “is not a defense to a recordkeeping violation” under the FLSA (citation omitted)); Nieddu v. Lifetime Fitness, Inc., 38 F. Supp. 3d 849, 864–65 (S.D. Tex. 2014) (rejecting claim that employees bear the burden of keeping accurate records and noting that “[t]he obligation [to pay overtime under the FLSA] is the employer’s and it is absolute,” and the employer “cannot discharge it by attempting to transfer his statutory burdens of accurate record keeping” (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Caserta v. Home Lines Agency, Inc., 273 F.2d 943, 946 (2d Cir. 1959)); Solis v. SCA Rest. Corp., 938 F. Supp. 2d 380, 398 (E.D.N.Y. 2013) (finding that a “failure to make, keep, and preserve adequate and accurate records” under the FLSA is “a per se violation of the Act”). 6 We further note that the district court elsewhere properly considered ODPS’s willfulness (or lack thereof) in violating the FLSA, concluding that the two-year rather than three-year statute of limitations applied because there was insufficient evidence that ODPS’s violations were willful. Nos. 17-5995/6071 Acosta v. Off Duty Police Servs., et al. Page 19 In this case, ODPS appeals the district court’s calculation of back wages owed by ODPS to Frank Medieros, Steven Newman, and Jason Petra. We address the damages owed to each worker in turn.
The district court calculated the back wages owed to Medieros in the same way it calculated the back wages owed to other nonsworn workers—by dividing the amount he was paid by his hourly rate. ODPS argues that the district court should have used a different method to calculate Medieros’s back wages because of the “unique factors regarding [his] varying services provided to ODPS customers, and the unique nature of his compensation.” In addition to working as a security guard and traffic controller, Medieros also helped ODPS schedule other workers’ assignments and recruited new customers to the business. For scheduling another worker on a job, Medieros received one dollar for every hour of service performed by the worker on that job; for recruiting a new customer, he received ten percent of the profits generated by that customer. ODPS does not argue that Medieros’s scheduling or recruiting work or additional forms of compensation are exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements. Instead, ODPS claims that the district court should have used some unspecified alternative method of calculating Medieros’s total hours and compensation to account for his varied work responsibilities. In its briefing in the district court, ODPS announced that “[b]ased on relevant records,” Medieros “only had a single week in which he provided services to an ODPS customer for more than 40 hours in a week.” But ODPS provided no citation to these “relevant records,” which in any event do not address Medieros’s other work activities,7 nor has it proposed any alternative method of calculating Medieros’s back wages on appeal. ODPS insists that it has no obligation “to ‘adequately explain’ its proposed damages calculations.” Citing Mt. Clemens, ODPS claims that its only burden is to “negate the reasonableness” of the DOL’s proposed calculation, not to offer a reasonable alternative. But 7In his interview with the DOL investigator, which was memorialized in a personal interview statement admitted into evidence, Medieros reported that he worked an average of 50 hours per week. Nos. 17-5995/6071 Acosta v. Off Duty Police Servs., et al. Page 20 this argument misses the point. The reasonableness of the DOL’s proposed calculation depends in part on the availability of other, more reasonable alternatives to that proposal. The fact that ODPS cannot identify any reasonable alternative to the DOL’s calculation is highly probative of whether the DOL’s proposed method is reasonable. And more importantly, to the extent that the DOL’s calculation provides only a rough estimate of the back wages owed to Medieros, that imprecision is a result of ODPS’s failure to keep accurate and complete records. Courts will not punish employees for their employer’s failure to comply with the FLSA’s recordkeeping requirements. “Disapproving of an estimated-average approach simply due to lack of complete accuracy would ignore the central tenant of Mt. Clemens—an inaccuracy in damages should not bar recovery for violations of the FLSA or penalize employees for an employer’s failure to keep adequate records.” Monroe, 860 F.3d at 412. Although the calculation adopted by the district court may be imprecise, it is the best method available in light of ODPS’s failure to maintain accurate and complete records. We therefore affirm the district court’s calculation.
ODPS also contends that Newman and Petra should not have received overtime wages for work performed during the periods in which they were sworn officers. This argument depends on the conclusion that only ODPS’s nonsworn workers were employees entitled to overtime wages. Because we reject that premise, Newman’s and Petra’s status as sworn or nonsworn is irrelevant to the proper calculation of back wages. The district court’s calculation did not attempt to distinguish between the periods in which Newman and Petra were sworn or nonsworn, and we find no cause to disturb its original calculation.