Court Opinion

ID: 9475106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:17:35.553485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:31.031901
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
As this is an expedited appeal, I am constrained to curtail what would otherwise be an extended discourse. Respectfully, I dissent. The government based its appeal on its interpretation of the Portal to Portal Act and I agree that it does not, by itself, support the argument based upon it. *995My difficulty goes back to the original Act of June 25, 1938, 52 Stat. 1069. From that very beginning the law made it clear that the doubled or “liquidated” damages were not an entitlement as were the first or single damages, the unpaid overtime. It did this by providing that the primary agent of enforcement, the Secretary of Labor, could only require payment of unpaid overtime. This is still perpetuated in 29 U.S.C. § 216(e) which also now recites that acceptance of unpaid overtime as directed by the Secretary waives liquidated damages. Such liquidated damages are an added reward for assuming the burden of bringing suit rather than an entitlement; if you allow the Secretary of Labor to bear your burden you don’t get them. On the other hand, the Secretary’s efforts benefit the entire payroll, not just the grievants, to the tune of the entitlement only.
To me, it is a distortion of the Act for the court to busy itself as an ersatz Secretary of Labor, but with respect to the liquidated damages, endeavoring to bring in the entire payroll to share in this windfall, rather than those who have sued for it only. Here, it takes some of the curse off that the nonparties to be solicited will, according to counsel’s statement, not receive the whole statutory damages if the interest is less, but only an amount equal to the interest, up to the statutory maximum.