Court Opinion

ID: 9479090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:08:16.25908+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:49.487067
License: Public Domain

GARZA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority concludes that, despite his success in obtaining a judgment against SAMTA which resulted in the recovery of a substantial back overtime pay award for himself and his fellow employees under § 216(b) of the FLSA, appellant Garcia may not recover his reasonable attorneys’ fees. Because I find that both the equities as well as the law in this ease compel us to grant Garcia an award of attorneys’ fees and costs, I must respectfully dissent.
There can be no question that the procedural posture of this case is both complex and unique in FLSA litigation. The majority apparently finds this complexity and singularity prohibitive of a holding that would award Garcia his attorneys’ fees without doing violence to the statutory language of § 216(b). The majority states that “Garcia has pointed to no statute that authorizes attorney’s fees for a prevailing defendant-intervenor in a declaratory judgment action against the Secretary of Labor.” This observation takes a view of § 216(b) that is both unnecessarily restrictive and unwarranted in light of prior cases. It also misses the broader and more important implications of the case before us.
The attorneys’ fees provision of § 216(b) obviously contemplates that, in virtually all cases, employees who allege a violation of the FLSA will be aligned as plaintiffs and employers will participate as defendants. The explicit denial of attorneys’ fees to *447“defendants” was meant, ostensibly, to preclude recovery of fees by employers from employees; the provision is a one-way street. It is clear, however, that a federal court may award attorneys’ fees to an employee who has litigated his FLSA claim in the posture of a defendant. In St. John v. Brown, 38 F.Supp. 385 (N.D.Tx.1941), an employer filed an action seeking a declaratory judgment that its employees were not entitled to the protection of the FLSA. Notwithstanding that the employees were aligned as defendants in the case, the district court for the Northern District of Texas, after entering judgment against the employer, allowed recovery by the employees of their reasonable attorneys’ fees. St. John, 38 F.Supp. at 390.
On October 18, 1985, in accordance with the parties’ Stipulation of Dismissal filed on that date, the court entered judgment in favor of Garcia. Pursuant to that Stipulation, the parties agreed to the dismissal of SAMTA’s declaratory judgment claim as well as the counterclaim by the Secretary of Labor. They further agreed that the previous filing of the Secretary’s counterclaim would not bar any existing or future consents to sue filed in Garcia’s FLSA action. Significantly, paragraph 6 of the Stipulation of Dismissal provides that nothing in the agreement “is intended to resolve or foreclose any claims or defenses involving attorneys’ fees and costs which may be claimed by SAMTA employees against SAMTA related to litigation of the constitutional issue.” San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority v. Garcia, Civ. Action No. SA-79-CA-457 (W.D.Tex., filed Oct. 18, 1985) (Stipulation of Dismissal).
There can be no question that appellant Garcia was successful in an action to recover the liability of SAMTA to its employees for unpaid overtime compensation. The majority denies him an award of attorneys’ fees simply because one of the issues in his § 216(b) case was, for reasons of judicial economy, determined in a related separate cause of action — a cause of action in which he participated and, eventually, prevailed.
Prior to the judgment of October 18, 1985, the filing of a counterclaim by the Secretary of Labor in SAMTA’s declaratory judgment action precluded Garcia from going forward with his section 216(b) claim. Had the court stayed SAMTA’s declaratory judgment action and allowed litigation on the identical constitutional issue to proceed in Garcia’s section 216(b) case, Garcia would clearly have been entitled to attorneys’ fees. From this perspective, SAM-TA’s case can be viewed as a separate suit, the purpose of which was to do nothing more than determine the threshold constitutional issue presented in Garcia’s own section 216(b) action. It seems anomalous to me, therefore, to allow recovery of attorneys’ fees when the constitutional issue is litigated in one case, but to deny them when, for purposes of judicial economy, the same issue is litigated in a related suit, notwithstanding that the ultimate result (i.e., recovery of overtime backpay by Garcia and his co-employees due to SAMTA’s violations of the FLSA) would be precisely the same under both circumstances.
Additionally, I find compelling the fact, mentioned only tangentially by the majority, that Garcia was the only party to argue that National League of Cities should be overruled, the position ultimately adopted as the central holding in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985). Thus, Garcia’s participation in the declaratory judgment action brought by SAMTA was much more than, in the words of the majority, merely “instrumental in obtaining the overruling of National League of Cities.” Rather, his efforts were indispensible and, indeed, decisive. It is a mistake to allow our focus upon the procedural complexity of this case to obscure our awareness that appellant here has vindicated the very rights that § 216(b) was crafted to protect.
Garcia originally filed a section 216(b) action to recover unpaid overtime compensation. That action was stayed so that the threshold, and determinative, tenth amendment issue could be litigated in one forum. The presentation of Garcia’s winning argument before the Supreme Court was essential to his ultimate victory in the section 216(b) action. Under the unique procedural *448circumstances of this case, in my view, the declaratory judgment action was part and parcel of Garcia’s section 216(b) lawsuit inasmuch as Garcia was the only party before the Supreme Court to present the argument that ultimately resulted in the payment of $109,000 in back overtime pay to SAMTA’s employees. Garcia’s actions in this case were, at all times, consistent with behavior that the attorneys’ fees provision of section 216(b) was designed to encourage. For these reasons, an award of attorneys’ fees to Garcia best comports with the intentions of Congress and the purposes of section 216(b).