Knox v. Jones Grp.

• Decision Date: 15 August 2016
• Docket Number: 1:15-cv-01738-SEB-TAB
• Citation: 201 F.Supp.3d 951
• Parties: Kimberlee KNOX, Kayla Bratcher on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated, known and unknown, Plaintiffs, v. JONES GROUP, Avon Wings, LLC doing business as Buffalo Wild Wings, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana

201 F.Supp.3d 951

Kimberlee KNOX, Kayla Bratcher on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated, known and unknown, Plaintiffs,

v.JONES GROUP, Avon Wings, LLC doing business as Buffalo Wild Wings, Defendants.

1:15-cv-01738-SEB-TAB

United States District Court, S.D. Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

Signed August 15, 2016

Douglas M. Werman, Zachary C. Flowerree, Werman Salas PC, Jamie G. Sypulski, Law Office of Jamie Golden Sypulski, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs.

Craig W. Wiley, Melissa K. Taft, Jackson Lewis P.C., Indianapolis, IN, Paul DeCamp, Jackson Lewis LLP, Reston, VA, for Defendants.

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS

SARAH EVANS BARKER, JUDGE, United States District Court, Southern District of Indiana

This cause is before the Court on Defendants' Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim [Docket No. 14], filed on December 3, 2015. For the reasons detailed below, Defendants' Motion is DENIED .

Factual Background

Plaintiffs Kimberly Knox and Kayla Bratcher are former employees of Defendants' Buffalo Wild Wings Avon, Indiana location. Together, they have brought claims against Defendants for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq. , alleging that Defendants willfully paid them less than the minimum wage during their employment.

While employed at Buffalo Wild Wings, both Knox and Bratcher worked, at varying times, as either a bartender or a server for which they were paid a tip-credit wage of $2.13.¹ As servers, Plaintiffs were required to arrive at the restaurant approximately an hour before it opened to perform "opening duties," which included: placing chairs at tables, making tea, filling ice bins, preparing "sani" buckets, screwing nozzles into soda machines, and portioning ranch and blue cheese dressing.² Dkt. 1 at ¶¶ 22, 38. After their morning shifts ended, Plaintiffs were required to perform "out tasks," including: restocking the ice bins, rolling silverware, washing food platters, restocking table caddies, sweeping the floors, portioning more ranch and blue cheese dressings, cleaning trash cans, and sifting through trash bins to locate any silverware which may have been thrown away during the prior shift. Id. ¶¶ 23, 39. When Plaintiffs worked the evening shifts, they were required to stay at the restaurant to perform "closing duties" such as: wiping down tables, removing nozzles from soda machines, placing chairs on top of tables, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping and deck scrubbing the floors, cleaning the tea urns, washing food platters, bowls, and silverware, rolling the clean silverware, dumping the trash, cleaning trash cans, and checking for accidentally disposed of silverware. Id. ¶¶ 24, 40. During their shifts, Plaintiffs were required to perform additional work between the times they were serving customers, including: washing dirty silverware and food platters, refilling "sani" buckets, brewing iced tea, and emptying the trash. Id. ¶¶ 25, 41. Other server duties included: dusting restaurant ledges, cleaning windows, booths, soda machines, ice bins, table caddies, table and chair legs, the wall separating the dining room from the bar area, and the televisions. Id. ¶¶ 26, 42. In total, Plaintiffs claim that they spent approximately fifty percent of their time as servers completing these non-customer based tasks. Id. ¶¶ 21, 37.

As bartenders, Plaintiffs' "opening duties" included: slicing lemons, limes, and oranges, removing caps from the beers taps, pulling tabs on beer kegs, removing chairs from table tops, refilling the bar's ice bin, and filling the bar's sinks with water and cleaning solution. Id. ¶¶ 27, 43. Their post-morning-shift "out tasks" included: washing glassware, restocking beer, wiping down tables, restocking table caddies, and deck brushing and mopping the keg cooler. Id. ¶¶ 28, 44. Their "closing duties" included: putting caps on the beer nozzles, washing bar mats, fruit trays, bar spoons, and blenders, cleaning drains under the beer taps, wiping down the bar, placing chairs on table tops, mopping and deck scrubbing the floors, and cleaning debris out of the dishwasher and bar sinks. Id. ¶¶ 29, 45. Between customers, Plaintiffs were also required to wash glasses and silverware. Id. ¶¶ 30, 46. Other bartender duties included: polishing martini and margarita glasses as well as cleaning drains, ice bins, walls, liquor bottles, shelves, coolers, and glass chillers. Id. ¶¶ 31, 47. Plaintiffs claim that they spent between thirty-five and forty percent of their time as bartenders tending to these non-customer based duties. Id. ¶¶ 21, 37.

On November 3, 2015, Plaintiffs filed a Complaint on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated alleging that Defendants were in violation of the FLSA by: (1) requiring them to perform non-tipped work that was unrelated to their tipped occupations while paying them less than minimum wage, id. ¶¶ 80–81; (2) requiring them to perform non-tipped work that was incidental to their tipped occupation for more than twenty percent of the time without paying minimum wage, id. ¶¶ 82–83; and (3) requiring them to reimburse Defendants from their tips for "customer walkouts" and "cash drawer shortages," while paying them sub-minimum, tip-credit wages. Id. ¶¶ 84–85. On December 3, 2015, Defendants filed a motion to dismiss this cause of action, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim on which relief can be granted. Dkt. 14. The motion was fully briefed on February 4, 2016, but we stayed a ruling pending a decision by the Seventh Circuit in a related case. The related case was decided on July 15, 2016, and Defendants' motion is now ripe for decision.

Legal Standard

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure authorize dismissal of claims for "failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted." Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). In determining the sufficiency of a claim, we consider all allegations in the complaint to be true and draw all reasonable inferences as required in the plaintiff's favor. Jacobs v. City of Chi., 215 F.3d 758, 765 (7th Cir.2000). Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) applies, with several enumerated exceptions, to all civil claims, and it establishes a liberal pleading regime in which a plaintiff must provide only a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that [she] is entitled to relief," Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 8(a)(2). This reflects the modern policy judgment that claims should be "determined on their merits rather than through missteps in pleading." E.E.O.C. v. Concentra Health Servs., Inc., 496 F.3d 773, 779 (7th Cir.2007) (citing 2 James W. Moore, et al., Moore's Federal Practice § 8.04 (3d ed. 2006)). A pleading satisfies the core requirement of fairness to the defendant so long as it provides "enough detail to give the defendant fair notice of what the claim is and the grounds upon which it rests." Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074, 1083 (7th Cir.2008).

In its decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009), the United States Supreme Court introduced a more stringent formulation of the pleading requirements under Rule 8. In addition to providing fair notice to a defendant, the Court clarified that a complaint must "contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ " Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955 ). Plausibility requires more than labels and conclusions, and a "formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Killingsworth v. HSBC Bank Nevada, N.A., 507 F.3d 614, 618 (7th Cir.2007) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955 ). Instead, the factual allegations in the complaint "must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Id. The plausibility of a complaint depends upon the context in which the allegations are situated, and turns on more than the pleadings' level of factual specificity; the same factually sparse pleading could be fantastic and unrealistic in one setting and entirely plausible in another. See In re Pressure Sensitive Labelstock Antitrust Litig., 566 F.Supp.2d 363, 370 (M.D.Pa.2008).

Although Twombly and Iqbal represent a new gloss on the standards governing the sufficiency of pleadings, they do not erode the fundamental principle of liberality embodied in Rule 8. As our court has noted, "Notice pleading is still all that is required, and ‘a plaintiff still must provide only enough detail to give the defendant fair notice of what the claim is and the grounds upon which it rests, and, through his allegations, show that it is plausible, rather than merely speculative, that he is entitled to relief.’ " United States v. City of Evansville, 2011 WL 52467, at *1 (S.D.Ind. Jan. 8, 2011) (quoting Tamayo, 526 F.3d at 1083 ). On a motion to dismiss, "the plaintiff receives the benefit of imagination, so long as the hypotheses are consistent with the complaint." Sanjuan v. Am. Bd. of Psychiatry & Neurology, Inc., 40 F.3d 247, 251 (7th Cir.1994).

Discussion

Plaintiffs have alleged that Defendants violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq. ("FLSA") by inappropriately paying them a sub-minimum, tip-credit wage. In general, the FLSA mandates that covered employees receive a minimum wage of at least $7.25 per hour. 29 U.S.C. § 206(a)(1)(c). However, § 203 of the Act creates an exception for "tipped employees" according to which an employer may pay an employee a "tip-credit" wage of $2.13 per hour. 29 U.S.C. § 203(m). For the employer to utilize this tip credit in setting wages payable to an employee, the employee must: (1) be "engaged in an occupation in which he customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips," (2) be informed of the tip-credit wage provisions, (3) receive an additional...