Opinion ID: 665873
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the officer plaintiffs' claim

Text: 10 The FLSA exempts from its overtime requirements any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity... . 29 U.S.C.A. Sec. 213(a)(1) (1965 & Supp.1993); see also 29 C.F.R. Secs. 541.1 to 541.3 (1993). The City argues that the officer plaintiffs, who hold the ranks of lieutenant, captain, and battalion chief, are exempt executive or administrative employees and that, therefore, they are not entitled to overtime under the FLSA. The officer plaintiffs contend that they are not salaried employees, that their job functions place them beyond the scope of the executive and administrative exemptions, and that, therefore, they are entitled to overtime. 11 The City argues that even if the officer plaintiffs are not exempt, their claim is untimely because the City adopted its classification system more than three years ago. Actions under the FLSA are forever barred unless commenced within two years after the cause of action accrued. 29 U.S.C.A. Sec. 255(a) (1985). In the case of willful violations, the limitations period is extended to three years. Id. According to the City, the adoption of its classification system constitutes a discrete past act which started the limitations clock running; by failing to assert their rights within three years of the policy's adoption, the officer plaintiffs forever lost the right to challenge the system. We disagree. 12 The City's argument fails because, if the officer plaintiffs are not subject to the exemption, the FLSA has been violated each time the City issued an officer plaintiff a paycheck that failed to include payment for overtime hours actually worked. Absent an applicable exemption, the FLSA requires the City to pay its firefighters overtime once they have worked more than 159 hours in any 21 day work period. 29 C.F.R. Sec. 553.230(c) (1993). Each failure to pay overtime constitutes a new violation of the FLSA. Hodgson v. Behrens Drug Co., 475 F.2d 1041, 1050 (5th Cir.1973) (It is well settled that [a] separate cause of action for overtime compensation accrues at each regular payday immediately following the work period during which the services were rendered and for which the overtime compensation is claimed. (internal quotation marks omitted)); Halferty v. Pulse Drug Co., 821 F.2d 261, 271 (5th Cir.1987); Beebe v. United States, 226 Ct.Cl. 308, 640 F.2d 1283, 1293 (1981); Aaron v. City of Wichita, 797 F.Supp. 898, 902 (D.Kan.1992) ([E]ach paycheck received by plaintiffs constituted a new cause of action for the alleged violation of the FLSA [and] plaintiffs are entitled to recover for any violations which occurred in the two years preceding [the date of their claim].); Mitchell v. Lancaster Milk Co., 185 F.Supp. 66, 70 (M.D.Pa.1960); cf. Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385, 395, 106 S.Ct. 3000, 3006, 92 L.Ed.2d 315 (1986) (Each week's paycheck that delivers less to a black than to a similarly situated white is a wrong actionable under Title VII ....); Mitchell v. Jefferson County Bd. of Educ., 936 F.2d 539, 548 (11th Cir.1991) (applying the continuing violation theory to actions under the Equal Pay Act and noting that the theory is applicable to challenges under the [FLSA] for illegal minimum wages or overtime payments); Brewster v. Barnes, 788 F.2d 985, 993 (4th Cir.1986) (applying the continuing violation theory to discriminatory wage payments under the Equal Pay Act); Jenkins v. Home Ins. Co., 635 F.2d 310, 312 (4th Cir.1980) (holding that Title VII and Equal Pay Act claims were not barred by the statute of limitations because the alleged discrimination occurred each time the female plaintiff was paid less than her male colleagues for the same work). 13 Although the theory on which the officer plaintiffs rely is often called the continuing violation theory, see, e.g., Hendrix v. City of Yazoo City, 911 F.2d 1102, 1103 (5th Cir.1990), in the present case, the term is something of a misnomer. The term continuing violation suggests that the original violation, namely the decision to classify overtime-eligible employees as exempt, is somehow the source of the employees' present ability to recover. It is not. Assuming they are not exempt employees, the source of their recovery is the failure to pay them overtime, not the City's rationale for not paying them overtime. For statute of limitations purposes, the City's decision to classify the officer plaintiffs as exempt is not relevant--except, perhaps to the willfulness issue and whether the three-year or two-year period applies. What is determinative for statute of limitations purposes is that the officer plaintiffs have worked unpaid overtime hours during the statute of limitations window. 14 The term continuing violation also implies that there is but one incessant violation and that the plaintiffs should be able to recover for the entire duration of the violation, without regard to the fact that it began outside the statute of limitations window. That is not the case. Instead of one on-going violation, this case involves a series of repeated violations of an identical nature. Because each violation gives rise to a new cause of action, each failure to pay overtime begins a new statute of limitations period as to that particular event. 15 Thus, the officer plaintiffs have a non-barred cause of action with respect to any claims (i.e., any paychecks which omitted pay for overtime worked) that accrued within two years--three years, if the City's violations were willful--of the date the complaint was filed. See 29 U.S.C.A. Sec. 255(a) (1985). If they are not exempt employees, then the officer plaintiffs are entitled to recover for overtime hours worked dating back to the beginning of the statute of limitations period, even though [the original classification occurred] outside the statute of limitations. Hendrix, 911 F.2d at 1104 (discussing Halferty v. Pulse Drug Co., 821 F.2d 261, 270-71 (5th Cir.1987)); see also Beavers v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., 975 F.2d 792, 796 (11th Cir.1992) (holding that if a continuing violation of Title VII exists then the plaintiff may recover with respect to the application of that [unlawful] policy within the preceding 180 days, which is the Title VII statute of limitations period). 16 Two recent decisions from other circuits appear at first blush to be contrary to the decision we reach, but upon a closer look, are reconcilable with it. In Anderson v. City of Bristol, 6 F.3d 1168, 1176 (6th Cir.1993), the court held that the plaintiff firefighters' claim for overtime under section 7 was time-barred. However, the Anderson plaintiffs' sole complaint was that the city had recalculated their wage rates so as to eliminate the future impact of overtime pay. Id. at 1169. The wage recalculation had occurred five years before the plaintiffs filed suit, id., and [t]he only continuing effect [was] a reduced pay rate that absorbed any overtime increase that would have occurred without the wage reduction. Id. at 1176. Each actual paycheck included payment for overtime worked, but because the plaintiffs' base pay had been reduced, their take-home pay remained unchanged. The court reasoned that any unlawful action by the city occurred outside the statute of limitations. The Anderson decision is not inconsistent with our decision in this case, where the officer plaintiffs suffered a new violation with each paycheck they received. 2 17 In Alldread v. City of Grenada, 988 F.2d 1425, 1427 (5th Cir.1993), the plaintiffs, officers and non-officers of the Grenada fire department, alleged that the city had violated the FLSA by failing to pay them for sleep time, and by misclassifying the officer plaintiffs as exempt employees. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling that these claims were time-barred. Id. at 1430. The Alldread decision is inapposite with respect to the officer plaintiffs' claims in this case. In Alldread, all [the] appellants alleged they were entitled to receive overtime compensation for their sleep time. 988 F.2d at 1429. Under the FLSA regulations, the city could, pursuant to  'an expressed or implied agreement'  with the firefighters, id. at 1428 (quoting 29 C.F.R. Sec. 553.222(c)), treat sleep time as non-compensable for firefighters working shifts of more than 24 hours. Each of the Alldread plaintiffs had signed an agreement providing that uninterrupted sleep time would not be compensated. More than four years after the new pay system had taken effect, the plaintiffs filed suit, claiming that the city had coerced them into signing the agreement. Id. at 1429. The Fifth Circuit held: 18 The sole basis for appellants' seeking to impose liability against the City for sleep time compensation is their claim that the City, in the course of devising the new pay policy, coerced them, in August 1985, to relinquish their FLSA rights under threat of termination and thereafter, in October 1985, implemented a pay system predicated on those waivers. That alleged act of coercion is the event giving rise to appellants' complaint and is patently a single violation of the FLSA. Even though the effect of this act was reflected in appellants' subsequent paychecks, that effect does not transform the act into a continuing violation. 19 Id. at 1432 (emphasis in original). The claims of the officer plaintiffs in Alldread were based on a single violation of the FLSA which had occurred more than three years before. By contrast, the claims of the officer plaintiffs in the present case are not; they do not require reference to any action taken by the City outside the limitations period. It is true that the City's original adoption of the pay policy occurred more than three years ago, but the officer plaintiffs need not prove the adoption of that pay policy to recover. If they are truly not exempt employees, the officer plaintiffs only need to prove that they have worked unpaid overtime hours during the statute of limitations period. 20 Therefore, the district court's order granting the City summary judgment as to the officer plaintiffs' claims on statute of limitations grounds is due to be reversed insofar as it involves paychecks, received during the relevant statute of limitations period, which did not include payment for overtime that was worked. 3