Roy v. County of Lexington
| Decision Date | 13 May 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 3:93-2292-19.,3:93-2292-19. |
| Citation | 928 F. Supp. 1406 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina |
| Parties | John R. ROY, Gary Waller, David Rhoten, Daniel C. Force, Crystal Galloway, Gary W. Holmes, Eric T. Bushey, M.T. Hammond, John R. Lillard, David H. Dixon, Gary Semones, Richard McManus, Jr., Jason Hentz, Patricia H. Dupuis, Curtis Scott Ward, Mike Tanner, Gary A. Seibert, Robert McKeever, John L. Windhorn, Bobby Daggerhart, Melissa P. Harrison, Jay F. Burton, Teresa Hill, B.L. Burnes, Dwight C. Nolff, Thad C. Miller, David W. Shull, David E. Davis, Patricia H. Barnett, Joseph J. Rooney, Kevin G. Hicks, Robbie Kubler, Dalton E. Shull, John V. Ruff, Jr., Eric McFarland, James Garcia, Cynthia D. Plant, Robert D. McClanahan, George E. Hardy, Fern Jenkins, Jason Logan, Mildred H. Miller, Betty Koerner, J. Stuart Platt, Evelyn J. Williams, Jacqueline Fink, Jonathan L. Humphrey, Carroll W. Bledsoe, Jr., Johnathan M. Sebring, Alice H. Bennett, Tony L. Wingard, Stephen C. Sightler, and Tami Leigh Steinlage, Plaintiffs, v. COUNTY OF LEXINGTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, Defendant. |
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Gerald Frederick Smith of Svalina, Richardson & Smith, Columbia, South Carolina, and James Brown Richardson, Jr., Columbia, South Carolina, for Plaintiffs.
Stephen Terry Savitz and Linda Pearce Edwards of Gignilliat, Savitz & Bettis, Columbia, South Carolina, for Defendant.
On July 19, 1993, the Plaintiffs, all of whom are current and former emergency medical service (EMS) workers, brought this action against the Defendant, Lexington County, South Carolina, alleging, inter alia, that they had been denied overtime compensation in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. The case was tried without a jury on November 20 and 21, 1995. The following findings of fact and conclusions of law are submitted by this Court pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a).
During all of the times that are relevant to these proceedings, the EMS was one of five independent departments within Lexington County's Public Safety Division. Lexington County was geographically subdivided into nine response areas for the EMS, each with its own substation. Although some of the substations were jointly housed with fire fighting units, the two departments were physically separated by a wall. All of the EMS employees worked on daily shifts so that each substation would have a staff of two persons on duty throughout every twenty-four hour period. Incoming telephone calls were received from Lexington County's 911 central dispatch office, which screened each call and determined the type of service — law enforcement, fire and/or emergency medical — that was needed.1
The EMS teams were dispatched to fires, crime scenes, and automobile accidents whenever there was a report of an injury, the likelihood of an injury, or the dispatcher had no reliable information upon which to determine whether an injury had occurred. Upon the receipt of a request for emergency services, the dispatcher contacted the EMS team whose substation was located within the service area from which the call was made if the team was available. Each team was required to respond to every dispatch call within two minutes of its receipt. However, if an ambulance was on a call within its service area when an emergency call was received, another EMS vehicle in an adjacent service area would be sent to a geographically convenient location so that it could respond to a call from either service area. This procedure was described by Lexington County as being on a "stand by" basis.2
The FLSA generally requires employers to pay overtime compensation to their employees for any hours that they may have worked in excess of forty hours per week. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(a).
Following a decision in February 1985, in which the Supreme Court in Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985), declared that the provisions within the FLSA are applicable to state and local governments, Lexington County convened a meeting of its top officials, including its attorney for labor and employment matters, Julian Gignilliat,3 for the purpose of developing a plan that would conform to the requirements of the FLSA. During this meeting, Gignilliat advised the Lexington County officials that its EMS workers4 could be paid under § 7(k) of the FLSA, which contains a partial exemption for those "employees in fire protection activities or ... law enforcement activities" by increasing the threshold at which their entitlement to overtime compensation would begin. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(k) ("§ 7(k)"). He also advised his client that it could legally deduct eight hours per shift for sleeping and two and one-half hours per shift for meals from each employee's paycheck, subject to certain exceptions. Lexington County adopted his recommendations and subsequently incorporated them into an overtime policy for EMS employees.5
Lexington County compensated its employees under the law enforcement exemption by paying them for overtime employment after forty-three hours of work within a period of one week.6 These employees worked on three regularly recurring shifts of twenty-four and one-half hours (8:30 a.m. until 9:00 a.m. on the following day) — which, in essence, constituted a "one day on and two days off" work schedule.7 Each shift cycle recurred every twenty-one days. A shift contained three designated meal periods (namely, breakfast: 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.; lunch: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.; and dinner: 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) and a specific time for sleeping (11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.). The policy mandated that the EMS employees should not be interrupted during these times, except for an emergency call. Thus, they continued to be responsible for responding to emergency calls at any time during their shift, including the sleep and meal periods. Inasmuch as the EMS teams were obligated to respond to an emergency call within a period of two minutes, they often slept in their uniforms. If any portion of a meal period was interrupted by an emergency call, the affected employees were paid for the entire hour (even if the call was a false alarm).
They were also paid for any time in which they worked during their sleep periods, including compensation for a full hour of work even if only one minute of the hour was interrupted. If the employees were unable to get five consecutive hours of sleep, the entire eight-hour sleep period was counted as hours worked.8
Each EMS employee received an annual salary that was paid in equal installments on a bi-weekly basis. Under this policy, regular hours were designated as forty-three hours per week (not forty because of the application of the law enforcement exemption). However, the actual number of hours worked during each week varied within the three-week shift cycle because of the "one-day on, two-days off" schedule. Overtime was then added to the salary according to a "fluctuating work week." Under this method of compensation, employees were paid one-half of their regular hourly rate of pay for each hour of overtime. Since they were paid by salary rather than on an hourly basis, their regular rate of pay was determined by dividing the total number of compensable hours worked in the two-week pay period by their bi-weekly salary.9
The FLSA is construed "liberally to apply to the furthest reaches consistent with congressional direction." Tony & Susan Alamo Found. v. Secretary of Labor, 471 U.S. 290, 296, 105 S.Ct. 1953, 1959, 85 L.Ed.2d 278 (1985) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). "Exemptions from or exceptions to the FLSA's requirements are ... narrowly construed against the employer asserting them." Johnson v. City of Columbia, 949 F.2d 127, 129-30 (4th Cir.1991) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). An employer has the burden of proving all of the exceptions and exemptions that it claims, including those under the regulations which have been promulgated by the United States Department of Labor pursuant to the FLSA.10 Id. at 130; Clark v. J.M. Benson Co., Inc., 789 F.2d 282, 286 (4th Cir.1986); O'Neal v. Barrow County Bd. of Comm'rs, 980 F.2d 674, 676-77 (11th Cir.1993).
The first and most basic issue that this Court must resolve is whether the EMS employees were properly classified under § 7(k) of the FLSA. This section provides a partial exemption for "employees in fire protection activities or ... law enforcement activities" by increasing the threshold at which their entitlement to overtime compensation begins. In order for those ambulance and rescue service employees who work in an agency that is independent of fire protection or law enforcement to qualify for an exemption under § 7(k), the employer must comply with the "substantially related" test of 29 C.F.R. § 553.215 and the "80/20" rule of 29 C.F.R. § 553.212.11
The "substantially related" test is defined to mean that an employer must demonstrate that the ambulance and rescue service employees (a) "have received training in the rescue of fire, crime and accident victims" and (b) "are regularly dispatched to fires, crime scenes, riots, natural disasters and accidents." § 553.215; see also Bond v. City of Jackson, 939 F.2d 285, 288 (5th Cir.1991).
The first prong under § 553.215 is satisfied if the EMS employees received basic rescue training, including the extrication of automobile accident victims. See Bond, 939 F.2d at 287-88. Here, the evidence clearly indicates that the Plaintiffs received this type of training. Thus, this test has been satisfied.
However, defining and applying the "regularly dispatched" test is a much more difficult task. See Alex v. City of Chicago, 29 F.3d 1235, 1242 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 665, 130 L.Ed.2d 599 (19...
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