Bosh’s Former Driver Sues for Overtime Pay Violations

Chris Bosh’s former driver is suing him for violating overtime law. Michael Ray, the former driver, alleges that the NBA star failed to pay him overtime that he was due after moving to Austin, Texas in the summer of 2018.

In a federal lawsuit that Michael Ray filed in Austin, Texas, he claimed he started work as Bosh’s driver when the NBA player and his family were residents of the state of California. According to the lawsuit filed by Ray there were five people employed in the Bosh family home. Two were household managers. Two were employed to maintain the yard and the exterior of the home. And the fifth was Michael Ray himself, employed as Bosh’s driver.

 While the family was living in California, Ray claims that Bosh paid him by the hour and did not usually require any overtime hours. But on the rare occasion that Ray did put in overtime hours at Bosh’s request, he was paid overtime wages for the hours worked. This changed in July 2018 when Chris Bosh moved with his family to Austin, Texas. In the process of the move, Bosh cut back on his staff and placed his driver, Michael Ray, on a fixed salary.

At this point, Ray claims his duties were expanded to include more household duties, including unpacking boxes from the family’s move from California to Texas, putting together new furniture ordered for the new household, taking out the garbage, and supervising contractors and pest control workers while they were working on the Bosh property. According to the suit, Ray was also required to run errands for the family. For instance, he was required to go the pharmacy, the grocery store, pick up food ordered from restaurants, etc. The additional duties increased Ray’s working hours to over 70 hours per week.

Ray claims, despite the drastic increase in hours and obvious overtime, Bosh refused to provide him with any overtime pay. According to Ray, Bosh declined to provide him with overtime pay because Ray was on a salary and Bosh insisted that as that was the case, Bosh could require he work as many hours as necessary. Ray claims that within days of raising the issue of overtime pay, Bosh terminated his employment. Ray, who is now back in California, is seeking unpaid wages, reinstatement of his job and other damages.

If you have been denied overtime pay or if you need to discuss what constitutes an overtime pay violation, please get in touch with one of the experienced employment law attorneys at California’s Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP.

California Judge Rejects $7.5M Comcast Settlement Due to Systemic Wage and Hour Violations

A California judge recently rejected the $7.5M settlement proposed in the Comcast case alleging wage and hour violations under both state and federal law. The rejection was apparently based on the judge’s view that the FLSA violations were systemic and the settlement did not relieve his suspicions that defendant’s practices would continue in the future.

A group of technicians filed the lawsuit against O.C. Communications Inc. (OCC), Comcast Corporation and Comcast Cable Communications Management, LLC. The techs handled installation of cable, television, phone, security and internet services and claimed that the OCC and Comcast employed them as “joint” employers. The plaintiffs in the suit were classified by their employer/s as non-exempt employees. They performed installations on behalf of the Defendant throughout the country, working 5-6 days per week and up to 10 hours per day. According to the plaintiffs, they were paid on a hybrid pay system combining hourly rates with piece rates and based on the different jobs and tasks they performed on the job for customers of Comcast.

Plaintiffs in the case insist they were frequently pressured to under-report the number of hours they worked and to report meal breaks that they never took. Plaintiffs also allege that their time cards were manipulated to reduce their hours, reimbursements requests for necessary expenses were refused, they were actively prevented from taking lawfully required meal and rest breaks, and wage statements issued by the company purposefully concealed the rate of pay for work.

Both parties involved in the case agreed on the $7.5 million settlement and requested approval, but the California judge denied the parties’ request noting the substantial merit of alleged wage and hour violations in the case, and the apparent “systemic” nature of the Defendant’s actions. The judge described the proposed settlement as having been achieved at a discount that was difficult or the court to swallow without assurances that the alleged FLSA violations were unlikely to recur in the future.

If you have questions about wage and hour law or if you have experienced FLSA violations in the workplace, please get in touch with one of the experienced employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP.

Wavedivision Holdings, LLC Faces Class Action Lawsuit for Alleged Meal and Rest Break Violations

Wavedivision Holdings, LLC, a video, internet and phone services company, faces a class action lawsuit alleging that they failed to provide required overtime wages, legally required off-duty meal breaks and mandatory rest periods to their California employees. Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw filed the class action on February 9, 2018.

The class action against Wavedivision Holdings, LLC is currently pending in the San Mateo County Superior Court, Case No. 18CIV00684.

Allegations in the class action include:

·      Failure to lawfully calculate overtime

·      Failure to pay overtime

·      Refusing to allow employees to take off duty meal and rest breaks

·      Refusing to fully relieve employees of job duties for meal periods

Details in the lawsuit indicated that employees were sometimes unable to take off duty meal breaks or rest periods. When they were provided with meal breaks, they were sometimes not fully relieved of their job duties. According to allegations made in the class action lawsuit, Wavedivision Holdings employees were required to work over five hours in a shift with no off-duty meal break; a violation of California labor law.

California labor law requires that all employers offer their employees who are working shifts over five hours in length with an uninterrupted meal break of at least thirty minutes before the employee’s fifth hour of work is completed. California employers are required to provide a second uninterrupted meal break for employees who work ten hours.

According to the lawsuit, class members were paid using a non-discretionary incentive program. Under the program, Wavedivision Holdings offered employees hourly compensation with additional incentive compensation if they were able to successfully meet performance goals put in place by the company. Yet when the company calculated the overtime rate of pay for these same employees, the company allegedly did not include the incentive compensation as part of the “regular rate of pay.” In doing so, the company or Defendant, Wavedivision Holdings LLC, was miscalculating their employees’ overtime pay rate as a matter of policy.

If you have questions about how to file a class action lawsuit or how to qualify as a member of a class action lawsuit, please get in touch with one of the experienced class action and employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP.

Stanford Students File First Class Action Suit in Largest College Admissions Scam

The University of Southern California, Yale and the University of California Los Angeles (and other institutions) are facing class action lawsuits filed by two Stanford University students alleging that the schools engaged in massive admissions cheating by allowing wealthy parents to pay bribes in order to gain a spot for their children at some of California’s top schools.

The federal complaint was filed by Erica Olsen, from Henderson, Nevada, and Kalea Woods, from San Diego, California. The two students claim that they were denied a fair opportunity to be admitted to their top college choices and that their Stanford degrees were devalued due to criminal racketeering charges that were leveled by federal prosecutors.

Olsen claims that she applied with standardized test scores she described as “stellar” as well as athletic talent, but her application was denied by Yale. Olsen claims that if she had been aware that Yale’s admissions system was corrupted by fraudulent practices, she would not have wasted the approximate $85 on the application fee. Since she did pay the required application fee, she feels it is her right to complain that she did not receive a fair admissions consideration process; which is what she paid for.

Woods stated in the complaint that she was both exceptional student and a talented athlete, but that she was unaware that the University of Southern California admissions process was unfair and rigged; allowing parents to buy their kids’ way into the university with bribery and dishonesty.

Woods also claims that her Stanford degree is worth less than it should have been as prospective employers now question whether or not she was admitted to the university on her own merit or if she simply had rich parents who purchased her admission.

It is questionable whether or not the students will be able to successfully demonstrate that their Stanford degrees have been devalued due to the recent scandal. Experts suspect it may be less difficult to argue alleged fraud as a result of the lost application fee money, but there is still the question of whether or not people would have applied anyway. If anything, the lawsuit’s discovery process will most likely make it clear that the universities were aware of fraudulent activity in their admissions processes and this information would be beneficial.

Defendants named in the suit include UCLA, USC, the University of San Diego, Stanford, University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest University, Georgetown, and Yale. The class action seeks certification to include any person who applied to these schools between 2012 and 2018. The class action seeks a return of admission and application fees and unspecified damages to punish defendants and prevent similar conduct in future. The scandal that created the stir involved proctors changing test results, fabricating credentials, and in some cases even doctoring images in order to make non-athletic students appear athletic.

If you have questions about how to file a class action law suit or if you need to discuss how to seek certification, please get in touch with one of the experienced class action and employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP.

Recent Suit Claims Fresenius Left On-Call Time Out of OT Calculations

When Fresenius Medical Care Holdings Inc. calculated employee pay rates at their Ohio hospitals, they allegedly failed to include a stipend for on-call hours. In doing so, they effectively robbed their employees of overtime they were legally obligated to pay. As a result, Fresenius is now facing a proposed class action that was filed in Boston federal court (Freeman v. Fresenius Medical Care Holdings Inc. et al., case number 1:19-cv-10439).  

Fresenius Medical Care Holdings, a German company with North American headquarters in Massachusetts, is the world’s largest provider of dialysis products and services. David M. Freeman, plaintiff in the suit, was employed as a nurse by the company in 2009. During his time with the hospital, he worked at a number of their various facilities throughout Northern Ohio. As payment for his work, Freeman claims he received flat-rate stipends for time he spent on call on top of his hourly rate of pay. According to the lawsuit, Fresenius company policy does not recognize on-call time as hours worked and Freeman claims that this policy defies the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by excluding the on-call pay from the regular rate for the purposes of overtime calculations.

Freeman believes that the company knew that on-call pay and other, similar forms of payment for employment must be included according to employment law when computing an employee’s regular rate of pay for overtime calculations. Due to the obvious disregard of the illegality of their policy, Freeman alleges that Fresenius acted in reckless disregard for the illegality of their actions when excluding on call pay. The plaintiff argues that the practice of excluding on call pay in this manner runs counter to both longstanding U.S. Department of Labor regulations and case law.

For example, an agency regulation that was issued in the early 1980s states that on-call payment is “clearly paid as compensation for performing a duty involved in the employee’s job.” The regulation goes on to say that as on-call payment is payment for a job duty, it must be included as part of the employee’s regular rate of pay.

The lawsuit brings claims for OT violations under both federal and state law and seeks declatory and injunctive relief. It also establishes a putative class of individuals employed by Fresenius Medical Care North America during the last two years. In addition to naming Fresenius as a Defendant in the suit, Freeman named its subsidiary, Renal Care Group Inc. due to the claim that they issued checks on behalf of Fresenius.

If you have concerns about how your employer calculates your overtime pay or if you are not receiving overtime pay, please get in touch with one of the experienced California employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP today.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Mistakenly Releases Opinion Listing Deceased Judge

The U.S. Supreme Court held recently that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was in error when they released an opinion that listed a deceased judge as the author while also counting his vote. The deceased judge, Judge Stephen Reinhardt had died 11 years earlier.

In an unsigned opinion the nation’s high court vacated the Ninth Circuit’s April 9, 2018 decision in the case that interpreted the federal Equal Pay Act. In the opinion, it was found that…the opinion of the court, without Judge Reinhardt’s vote (the deceased judge that was mistakenly listed as author) that was attributed to him in err, would have been approved by only 5 of the 10 members of the en banc panel who were alive when the decision was filed. The other five judges did concur in the judgment, but they concurred for varying reasons. The issue to be made clear is that Judge Reinhardt’s vote that was mistakenly included made a difference in the outcome.

The question posed to the Supreme Court was whether or not it was lawful. Since Judge Reinhardt was no longer a judge when the en banc decision was filed for the case, the Ninth Circuit decided that the Ninth Circuit did, indeed, err when counting him a member of the majority. In doing so, they effectively allowed the deceased Judge Stephen Reinhardt to exercise the judicial power of the United States post mortem. Since federal judges are appointed for life – not eternity – the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals clearly erred.

Prior to his death, Judge Reinhardt did actively participate in the case and author the opinion. The majority opinion and concurrences were final and voting was completed prior to Judge Reinhardt’s death on March 29, 2018. The opinion listing the deceased judge in error was publicly released on April 9th. The Supreme Court found that the justification for counting Reinhardt’s vote was not consistent with well-established judicial practice, federal law, and judicial precedent.

The heavily debated opinion came in a discrimination case that was filed in the District Court for the Eastern District of California by a math consultant for the Fresno County Office of Education named Aileen Rizo. Rizo alleged she was paid less than her male counterparts.

If you need help protecting your legal rights in the workplace or have questions about how to file a California discrimination lawsuit, please get in touch with one of the experienced California employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP.

California Discrimination Lawsuit Against Hospital Results in $1M Award

A former employee of St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, California, Virginia Hoover, filed a California discrimination lawsuit against the hospital. A California jury awarded the woman $1 million.

Virginia Hoover, the former employee of St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, worked as a radiologic technologist at the facility. She alleges that during her time working at the California hospital she was discriminated against.

According to Hoover, the discrimination occurred after she was injured while moving some medical equipment on the job. Due to the work-related injury, Hoover had lifting restrictions. According to Virginia Hoover, the hospital did not respond appropriately to her lifting restrictions with adjusted duties to accommodate her injury and her necessary treatment. Instead, they responded to her need for accommodations by terminating her employment in 2014.

Providing Reasonable Accommodations in the Workplace for Disability or Injury is Required by Law: The California Fair Employment and Housing Act requires California employers with five or more employees to offer reasonable accommodation for individuals with a physical or mental disability to apply for jobs and perform the essential functions of their jobs unless doing so would cause the employer or their business undue hardship.

The facility’s legal representation argued that the hospital gave Virginia Hoover a leave of absence and also made efforts to assist her in returning to the job. But the hospital’s attorneys stated that the company did decide at that point that Ms. Hoover was not able to perform her job duties as necessary.

The jury’s award to Virginia Hoover totals $1 million and includes payments for lost earnings due to the termination from her position with the hospital and the associated emotional distress. The Defendant in the case, St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital of Camarillo, California has been on record stating that they plan to appeal the court’s decision.

If you have questions about discrimination in the workplace or if you need to file a California discrimination lawsuit to protect your rights on the job, please get in touch with the experienced California employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP.