Alldread v. City of Grenada

• Decision Date: 27 April 1993
• Docket Number: No. 91-7374,91-7374
• Citation: 988 F.2d 1425
• Parties: 125 Lab.Cas. P 35,803, 25 Fed.R.Serv.3d 786, 1 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 629 Timothy ALLDREAD, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF GRENADA, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1425

988 F.2d 1425

125 Lab.Cas. P 35,803, 25 Fed.R.Serv.3d 786,

1 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 629

Timothy ALLDREAD, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF GRENADA, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 91-7374.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

April 27, 1993.

T.H. Freeland, IV, Freeland, Freeland & Wilson, Oxford, MS, for plaintiffs-appellants.

N. Victoria Holladay, Walter W. Christy, Kullman, Inman, Bee, Downing & Banta, New Orleans, LA, for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

Before JOLLY and DAVIS, Circuit Judges, and LEE, ^* District Judge.

TOM S. LEE, District Judge:

Appellants, employees of the City of Grenada, Mississippi's fire department, filed suit against the City, and against present and former city council members and management employees in their official and individual capacities, alleging that the City had violated overtime compensation provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. (FLSA), by refusing to pay appellants for "sleep time" in accordance with 29 U.S.C. § 207(a) and (k) and 29 C.F.R. § 553.222. They additionally demanded overtime compensation for all fire personnel holding the rank of fire captain, contending that the City had wrongly classified fire captains as salaried employees under 29 C.F.R. § 541.1 to avoid FLSA Upon a motion by appellees for partial summary judgment, the district court dismissed appellants' claims for sleep time compensation, holding that the claim was barred by the FLSA's three-year statute of limitations, and dismissed appellants' individual capacity claims against appellees, concluding that in their individual capacities, appellees were not FLSA employers. The court further granted summary judgment for the City on appellants' claim relating to the status of captains as exempt salaried employees. The court, however, refused to grant summary judgment for the City on appellants' claim for interrupted sleep time compensation. Following trial, that issue was submitted to the jury, as the sole issue for its consideration, which found in favor of appellees. The district court denied appellants' motion for a new trial and this appeal followed. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the district court's disposition of appellants' claims.

                overtime provisions.   Appellants asserted, alternatively, that should they not be entitled to recover full sleep time pay, they were at least entitled under § 553.222 to payment for unpaid sleep interruptions
                

BACKGROUND

In 1985, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985), that the FLSA, including its minimum wage and overtime provisions, applies to municipalities. The FLSA exempts from its overtime provisions employers of firefighters if certain conditions are satisfied, that is, such employers are required to pay overtime only if the hours worked in a 28-day work period exceed 212 hours. ¹ Further, FLSA regulations specifically address the compensability of sleep time, providing at 29 C.F.R. § 553.222(c) that a public employer may exclude sleep time of firefighters who are on a scheduled tour of duty of more than 24 hours, if, "but only if there is an expressed or implied agreement between the employer and the employees to exclude such time" from hours worked. 29 C.F.R. § 553.222(c). "In the absence of such an agreement, the sleep time is compensable." Id. ² See also Morehead v. Pearl, 763 F.Supp. 175, 176 (S.D.Miss.1990); Harrison v. Clarksville, 732 F.Supp. 804, 806 (M.D.Tenn.1989); Jacksonville Professional Fire Fighters Ass'n, Local 2961 v. Jacksonville, 685 F.Supp. 513, 518-19 (E.D.N.C.1987); International Ass'n of Firefighters, Local 349 v. Rome, 682 F.Supp. 522, 529 (N.D.Ga.1988). While sleep time, therefore, can be excluded from compensable hours of work, the regulations require that sleep time which is interrupted by a call to duty must be counted as hours worked, and "[i]f the sleep time is interrupted to such an extent that the employee cannot get a reasonable night's sleep, ... the entire time must be counted as hours of work." 29 U.S.C. § 553.222(c). Finally, as is pertinent here, the FLSA exempts from its overtime requirements salaried, executive employees, 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1), as that term is defined at 29 C.F.R. § 541.1. ³

In response to Garcia, the City of Grenada undertook to devise a new work schedule and pay system for its fire department personnel. Whereas fire department personnel had previously worked shifts of 24 hours on and 48 hours off, the system proposed by the City established a 28-day tour of duty with 25 hours on and 47 hours off. Additionally, under the new system, eight hours of a shift were designated as sleep time, so that employees were no longer to be paid for their entire shift, but rather were to be paid for 17 hours of a 25-hour shift. The new plan also designated fire captains as executive employees and changed them from hourly to salaried status.

To implement the new system, James Turner, Grenada's city manager, met with fire department personnel in August 1985. Turner explained the system and distributed to each employee for his signature a document entitled "FLSA Agreement." The agreements recited that the signing employee "underst[oo]d and agree[d] to the changes made regarding [the Fair Labor Standards Act]," including, inter alia, that "[s]leeping time up to eight (8) hours will be deducted from the hours in a tour of duty." The agreements further provided that "interrupted sleep time will be paid[;] if interruption is over three (3) hours, the full eight (8) hours of sleep will be counted as hours worked." Each of the appellants signed a FLSA Agreement. The City's new work schedule and pay system became effective October 4, 1985 and the first paychecks under the system were issued October 25, 1985. Appellants worked and were paid in accordance with this system for nearly four years before filing suit against the City on July 6, 1989. In their complaint, appellants alleged that the City had illegally extracted from them waivers of their right to compensation for sleep time by coercing them to sign the FLSA Agreements under threat of termination ⁴ and that consequently, the FLSA Agreements were void. And those individuals who held the position of fire captain charged that they were not, in fact, executive employees but rather had been pretextually classified as such by the City to avoid FLSA's overtime requirements. Thus, all appellants alleged they were entitled to receive overtime compensation for their sleep time.

ANALYSIS

I.

Though the coercion alleged by appellants, and the implementation of the City's post-Garcia pay plan occurred more than three years prior to their filing suit, appellants contended that their suit was not barred by the FLSA's three-year statute of limitations, 29 U.S.C. § 255(a), ⁵ since they were not challenging the implementation of the pay system, but rather contended that each paycheck they received under the new pay system constituted a continuing violation of the FLSA and allowed them to recover for violations occurring during the limitations period. Appellees contended, and the district court agreed, that appellants' claim for sleep time compensation was time-barred since appellants' claim was based on a singular, discrete act--the City's implementation of a pay system based on allegedly void waivers--which occurred more than three years prior to appellants' filing suit. The court likewise concluded that as to those employees who held the position of fire captain at the time the new pay plan was implemented, their claims that they were not properly classified and treated as exempt employees were time-barred. This court agrees, and finds that the district court properly rejected appellants' bid to avert application of the limitations bar on the basis of a continuing violation theory.

The issue in a case such as this, where a claim is made that a continuing violation has occurred so as to, in effect, extend the time for filing suit, "is whether the reduction in pay was a single act of discrimination under the FLSA, hence barred by its three year statute of limitations, or whether the reduction effected in each subsequent paycheck constitutes a violation of the Act, thus making the complaint timely, at least in part." Hendrix v. Yazoo City, 911 F.2d 1102 (5th Cir.1990). As this court explained in Hendrix, the continuing violation theory encompasses two types of cases:

The first includes cases in which the original violation occurred outside the statute of limitations, but is closely related to other violations that are not time-barred. In such cases, recovery may be had for all violations, on the theory that they are part of one, continuing violation.

The second type of continuing violation is one in which an initial violation, outside the statute of limitations, is repeated later; in this case, each violation begins the limitations period anew, and recovery may be had for at least those violations that occurred within the period of limitations.

Hendrix, 911 F.2d at 1103-04 (footnotes omitted). In contrast,

if the discrimination alleged is solely the result of a single violation that occurred outside the statute of limitations, the later effect of this act does not constitute a continuing violation of the statute.

Id. at 1104 (citing United Air Lines, Inc. v. Evans, 431 U.S. 553, 97 S.Ct. 1885, 52 L.Ed.2d 571 (1977), and Lorance v. AT & T Technologies, 490 U.S. 900, 109 S.Ct. 2261, 104 L.Ed.2d 961 (1989)).

Appellants cite Halferty v. Pulse Drug Co., 821 F.2d 261, modified on other grounds, 826 F.2d 2 (5th Cir.1987), for the proposition that a challenge to a pay system under FLSA inherently charges a continuing violation. In Halferty, this court applied the doctrine of continuing violations to overtime and minimum...