Alvarez v. Bi Inc.
| Decision Date | 17 May 2018 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION No. 16-2705 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
| Parties | KAREL ALVAREZ & JUAN TELLADO, Individually and on behalf of all persons similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. BI INCORPORATED, Defendant. |
MEMORANDUM OPINION
This is a putative collective action for unpaid wages and overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("the FLSA"). Named Plaintiffs Karel Alvarez and Juan Tellado are an employee and former employee of Defendant BI Incorporated. Named Plaintiffs claim—on behalf of themselves and other similarly situated employees and former employees—that Defendant failed to pay them wages and overtime compensation for certain compensable work, in violation of the FLSA.
Pending are: (1) Plaintiffs' Motion to Conditionally Certify an FLSA Collective Action and to Facilitate Notice (Plaintiffs' "Notice Motion"); (2) Defendant's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment; (3) Plaintiffs' Motion to Stay or Deny Defendant's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment (Plaintiffs' "Rule 56(d) Motion"); and (4) Plaintiffs' Motion for Equitable Tolling. For the reasons that follow, Plaintiffs' Notice Motion and Rule 56(d) Motion will be granted; Defendant's Partial Summary Judgment Motion will be denied without prejudice; and Plaintiffs' Motion for Equitable Tolling will be denied.
The following facts are taken from Plaintiffs' Class and Collective Action Complaint, Defendant's Answer, the briefs filed in connection with the instant motions, and the exhibits and declarations attached thereto.
Defendant, BI Incorporated, provides products and services to government agencies that monitor parolees, probationers, pretrial defendants, and the like. In 2004, Defendant was awarded a contract by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") to monitor aliens released from ICE detention pending immigration proceedings. (This program, called the "Intensive Supervision Appearance Program," is referred to hereinafter as "ISAP," and Defendant's contract with ICE is referred to as the "ISAP Contract.") .)1
Under the ISAP Contract, Defendant is responsible for completing specified tasks to monitor the aliens that ICE designates for ISAP supervision. (Such aliens are referred to as ISAP "participants.") The required tasks include installing electronic monitoring equipment on participants and visiting with participants—both at the participants' homes and at Defendant's offices. (Pls.' Mem. in Supp. of Notice Mot., Ex. 6.)
To carry out these tasks, Defendant has employed a number of "ISAP Case Specialists." During the time period at issue, Defendant employed more than 400 ISAP Case Specialists in approximately 61 offices, located in 32 states. Each of these offices was led by an ISAP ProgramManager, who supervised the ISAP Case Specialists assigned to that office. (Compl. ¶ 8; Answer ¶ 8; McGee Dep. 60:23-61:2.)
Named Plaintiffs Karel Alvarez and Juan Tellado have worked for Defendant as ISAP Case Specialists. Named Plaintiff Alvarez was employed in Defendant's Philadelphia office from July 2012 through November 2015, and has since been employed in Defendant's office in Newark, New Jersey. Named Plaintiff Tellado was employed in Defendant's Philadelphia Office from January 2014 through January 2015. (Compl. ¶¶ 21-22; Answer ¶¶ 21-22.)
Plaintiffs initiated this action on June 2, 2016, by filing a Class and Collective Action Complaint, claiming that Defendant failed to pay them—and other ISAP Case Specialists throughout the United States—wages and overtime compensation, in violation of the FLSA and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act.2
Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Defendant failed to pay them for three categories of compensable work. First, Plaintiffs allege that they did various work "off-the-clock"—by, for example, working though lunch breaks—and that such off-the-clock work was required to meet the demands created by their heavy workload. Second, Plaintiffs claim that Defendant failed to compensate them for time that they were "on call"—that is, time that they were required to be prepared to respond within minutes to an alert triggered by an ISAP participant. And third, Plaintiffs assert that Defendant failed to compensate them for certain time related to visiting participants at their homes (referred to as "home visits"). Specifically, this was time spent commuting, in Defendant's vehicles, from the ISAP Case Specialists' own homes to the residence of the first ISAP participant to be visited during a given day; time spent reversecommuting home after a day's final home visit; and tasks undertaken in preparation for home visits, such as mapping out a route to the participants' homes, and uploading necessary information into their work phones. (Compl. ¶¶ 32-67.)
After Defendant answered the Complaint, I held a Rule 16 Conference, and on November 4, 2016, issued a Scheduling Order providing limited discovery on the issue of conditional certification of a collective action under the FLSA. The Scheduling Order allowed Plaintiffs to "serve written discovery requests and take one (1) Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of Defendant's corporate designee," and specified that both the "deposition and discovery requests shall be limited to the issue of conditional certification under the FLSA." (11/4/16 Or., Doc. No. 23.)
On April 3, 2017, Plaintiffs filed their Notice Motion, seeking conditional certification of a collective action under the FLSA and the issuance of a court-approved notice to other current and former ISAP Case Specialists. In addition to opposing Plaintiffs' Notice Motion, Defendant filed a Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on Plaintiffs' claims regarding home visits. Plaintiffs responded with a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d), urging me to defer consideration of Defendant's Partial Summary Judgment Motion until after discovery on the merits.
Since the filing of the Complaint in June 2016, ten additional ISAP Case Specialists have opted in to this collective action, bringing the total number of Plaintiffs to twelve. In November 2017, five months after filing their Notice Motion, Plaintiffs filed a Motion for Equitable Tolling, requesting that the statute of limitations for any additional potential opt-in plaintiffs be tolled from the date of the filing of their Notice Motion, April 3, 2017, until ten days after my decision on the Notice Motion. Defendant opposes such tolling.
For the reasons that follow, I conclude that Plaintiffs' FLSA claims should be conditionally certified as a collective action, and that notice should be sent to potential opt-in plaintiffs. I further conclude that Defendant's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment is premature, as discovery on the merits of Plaintiffs' claims has not been completed. Finally, I conclude that equitable tolling of the statute of limitations for potential opt-in plaintiffs is not appropriate in this case.
"The FLSA establishes federal minimum wage, maximum hour, and overtime guarantees that cannot be modified by contract." Genesis Healthcare Corp v. Symczyk, 569 U.S. 66, 69 (2013); see also 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. Employees alleging that their employer violated these guarantees by failing to pay wages and overtime compensation may sue on "behalf of . . . themselves and other employees similarly situated." 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). "A suit brought on behalf of other employees is known as a 'collective action.'" Genesis Healthcare Corp., 569 U.S. at 69.
A collective action under the FLSA differs from a class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, in that "the mere presence of [collective action] allegations does not automatically give rise to the kind of aggregate litigation provided for in Rule 23." Halle v. W. Penn Allegheny Health Sys. Inc., 842 F.3d 215, 225 (3d Cir. 2016). "Rather, the existence of a collective action depends upon the affirmative participation of opt-in plaintiffs," who must, to pursue their claims, affirmatively choose to join in the collective action by filing a written opt-in notice with the court. Id.; see also 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) ().
The FLSA does not define the term "similarly situated," nor does it specify a procedure for determining whether the employees that a named plaintiff seeks to include in a collective action are similarly situated. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has approved a "practical approach to managing FLSA collective actions" that consists of two steps. Halle, 842 F.3d at 224.
At the first step, a court determines whether a collective action should be "conditionally certified." Halle, 842 F.3d at 224. In order to obtain conditional certification, the named plaintiffs need only make "a modest factual showing—something beyond mere speculation—to demonstrate a factual nexus between the manner in which the employer's alleged policy affected him or her and the manner in which it affected the proposed collective action members." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing Zavala v. Wal Mart Stores Inc., 691 F.3d 527, 536 n.4 (3d Cir. 2012)).
Because this determination occurs "early in the litigation when minimal evidence is available to the court," the evidentiary standard is "extremely lenient." Viscomi v. Clubhouse Diner, No. 13-cv-4720, 2016 WL 1255713, at *3 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 31, 2016). "The Court does not evaluate the merits of a case when ruling...
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