Beccerril v. Spartan Concerte Prods., LLC
| Decision Date | 27 January 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-1379,19-1379 |
| Parties | JULIO BECCERRIL; EVARISTO RODRIGUEZ, Appellants v. SPARTAN CONCERTE PRODUCTS, LLC |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
NOT PRECEDENTIAL
Appeal from the District Court of the Virgin Islands
Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
December 12, 2019
Before: SMITH, Chief Judge, McKEE, and SHWARTZ, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiffs Julio Beccerril and Evaristo Rodriguez sued their former employer, Spartan Concrete Products LLC ("Spartan"), for failing to pay them overtime wages in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219, and the Virgin Islands Fair Labor Standards Act ("VIFLSA"), V.I. Code Ann. tit. 24, §§ 1-23, and for wrongful termination in violation of the Virgin Islands Wrongful Discharge Act ("WDA"), V.I. Code Ann. tit. 24, § 76. Because the District Court did not clearly err in calculating Plaintiffs' damages on their FLSA and VIFLSA claims and in entering judgment for Spartan on Plaintiffs' WDA claim, we will affirm.
Spartan produced, sold, and delivered ready mix concrete in St. Croix and St. Thomas using dump truck drivers to transport materials such as sand and gravel and concrete truck drivers to transport concrete. Spartan hired Beccerril and Rodriguez to work as dump truck drivers and paid them $22.50 for each load of materials they delivered, with each delivery taking about one-and-a-half hours to complete. When they were not delivering loads, Plaintiffs performed general maintenance in Spartan's concrete yard for $14 per hour.
Spartan paid Plaintiffs each week by business check but did not keep precise records of the hours they worked. Instead, tickets listing the loads they carried were used to track their deliveries. Spartan's trucking invoices also referenced tickets for deliveries completed and showed hours worked each day by each Plaintiff for an eleven-weekperiod for which Spartan had records for daily work. Maintenance hours worked were tracked in logbooks. From the invoices, tickets, logbooks, and Plaintiffs' paycheck stubs,1 Spartan created a spreadsheet reflecting Plaintiffs' work and pay by the week.2 Although not reflected in the records, Plaintiffs testified that they worked eight regular hours and four overtime hours, six days per week. Beccerril specifically testified that he worked twenty-four to twenty-five hours of overtime each week for which he did not receive overtime pay.
In June 2011, Spartan terminated Plaintiffs. In their termination letters, Spartan informed Plaintiffs that it was "reduc[ing] its work force and subcontractor services" "[d]ue to economic difficulties and high overhead costs."3 J.A. 421-22. Witnesses testified that Spartan lacked work requiring dump trucks, struggled to pay its bills, and had net income losses in both 2010 and 2011 of over $1.6 million. Spartan closed its St. Thomas branch in December 2013 and its St. Croix branch in November 2014.
Beccerril testified, however, that Spartan was "[v]ery, very busy," J.A. 90, that he worked until 10:00 p.m. the night before his termination and, even after his termination, he saw Spartan dump trucks being driven. Rodriguez echoed that Spartan "always was busy." J.A. 178.
Plaintiffs sued Spartan in the District Court of the Virgin Islands for, among other things, unpaid overtime wages in violation of the FLSA and the VIFLSA and wrongful termination in violation of the WDA. After a bench trial, the District Court granted judgment for Plaintiffs on their wage claims and for Spartan on their discharge claim. Rodriguez v. Spartan Concrete Prods., LLC, Civ. No. 12-29, 2019 WL 215580, at *11 (D.V.I. Jan. 16, 2019). The Court held: (1) Plaintiffs were employees, not independent contractors, and were entitled to overtime pay, id. at *4-6; (2) Spartan owed Beccerril $2,005.76 and Rodriguez $1,062.47 under the FLSA for hours worked beyond a forty-hour week, id. at *8; (3) Spartan owed Beccerril $636.83 and Rodriguez $147.89 under the VIFLSA for hours worked beyond an eight-hour workday, id. at *9; and (4) Spartan was not liable for wrongful discharge under the WDA because it proved that Plaintiffs'termination was due to its economic hardship, id. at *10. Plaintiffs appeal the Court's damages calculation and conclusion that they were not wrongly terminated.
We first address Plaintiffs' challenge to the FLSA award. For FLSA claims, the employee ordinarily bears "the burden of proving that he performed work for which he was not properly compensated." Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 687 (1946), superseded on other grounds, Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C. §§ 251-262, as recognized by IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21, 25-26 (2005). This burden is harder to meet where an employer has failed to keep adequate records of the "wages, hours, and other conditions and practices" of its employees under 29 U.S.C. § 211(c). Martin v. Selker Bros., Inc., 949 F.2d 1286, 1296-97 (3d Cir. 1991). When the employer's records are deficient, the employee may "submit sufficient evidence fromwhich violations of the Act and the amount of an award may be reasonably inferred." Id. at 1297.
While compensation calculations featuring "imprecision[s]" arising from recordkeeping failures do not defeat recovery, id., calculations based on "mere speculation" do not provide a basis for relief, Rosano v. Township of Teaneck, 754 F.3d 177, 189 (3d Cir. 2014) (citation omitted). If the employee produces evidence from which a fact finder may reasonably infer the amounts owed to the employee, the burden shifts to the employer to "come forward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed or with evidence to negative the reasonableness of the inference to be drawn from the employee's evidence." Martin, 949 F.2d at 1297 (quoting Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S. at 687-88).
Plaintiffs do not challenge the method used to calculate damages. Rather, they contend that the District Court erred in relying on Spartan's spreadsheet rather than their testimony that they worked twenty-four to twenty-five overtime hours per week. The Court did not err because Spartan's spreadsheet "negat[ed] the reasonableness of the inference to be drawn from" Plaintiffs' testimony. Id. (quoting Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S. at 687-88). While the spreadsheet does not specify the exact number of hours worked each week,5 other evidence, including Plaintiffs' testimony, provided a basis for the Court to conclude that each delivery took one-and-a-half hours to complete, and documents showed the number of loads each Plaintiff carried. From there, the Court could estimatethat Plaintiffs worked over forty hours some weeks, but not every week.6 Relatedly, the spreadsheet showed that Plaintiffs' work varied, and testimony corroborated that they did not work more than forty hours every week. Thus, although Plaintiffs testified that they each worked twenty-four to twenty-five hours over forty hours each week, the Court did not err in concluding that Spartan's evidence negated any reasonable inference that they regularly worked that amount of overtime.7
The District Court also did not clearly err in its calculation of overtime damages under the VIFLSA. The VIFLSA is analogous to the FLSA, Amalgamated Workers Union of V.I. v. Hess Oil V.I. Corp., 478 F.2d 540, 545 (3d Cir. 1973), but requires overtime pay in more circumstances than the FLSA. The VIFLSA requires employers to pay their employees an overtime rate of one and one-half times the regular rate for all work performed over forty hours in a week and work performed "in excess of 8 hours ina single workday, whichever excess is calculated to give the employee the greatest compensation." V.I. Code Ann. tit. 24, § 20(a).
Because Spartan's spreadsheet only summarizes work by the week, the District Court also considered Spartan's trucking invoices, which showed loads completed and hours Plaintiffs worked each day in an eleven-week period. For VIFLSA purposes, the Court calculated the amount of overtime pay to which Plaintiffs were entitled for each hour worked over eight hours for the eleven weeks for which Spartan had records of Plaintiffs' daily work, not including weeks Plaintiffs worked over forty hours (since they were already receiving overtime pay for those hours under the FLSA). The Court then divided this amount by eleven weeks to come to an average amount Spartan owed Plaintiffs per week for each of the eleven weeks. It then multiplied this amount by the number of weeks Plaintiffs worked for Spartan.
The District Court did not clearly err in awarding these amounts to Plaintiffs "even though the result was approximate" since its calculation reflected a "reasonable inference[] based on the evidence." Martin, 949 F.2d at 1297. Because Plaintiffs' damages estimation was limited to their own testimony, lacked corroboration, and failed to "account for the day-to-day differences in [employee] scheduling," the Court properly declined to adopt it. Rosano, 754 F.3d at 189 (alteration omitted). Moreover, the spreadsheet and invoices, though perhaps imprecise, rebut Plaintiffs' testimony. As a result, Plaintiffs' calculations constituted "mere speculation, and are insufficient tosupport the requisite inference necessary to meet their burden." Id. Thus, the Court did not clearly err in its calculation of damages.8
The District Court also properly determined that Spartan did not violate the WDA. Under the WDA, V.I. Code Ann. tit. 24, § 76, "an employer can lawfully fire an employee for one of nine enumerated reasons," Maynard v. Rivera, 675 F.3d 225, 228 (3d Cir. 2012), or "as a result of a general cutback in the work force due to economic hardship," § 76(c). The WDA abrogates the at-will employment doctrine and creates "a presumption . . . 'that an employee has been wrongfully discharged if discharged for anyreason other than those listed'" in ...
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