Bradford v. Naples Causeway Dev.
| Decision Date | 16 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 2:21-cv-00015-NT |
| Parties | THERESA BRADFORD, Plaintiff, v. NAPLES CAUSEWAY DEVELOPMENT, LLC, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | United States District Courts. 1st Circuit. United States District Court (Maine) |
ORDER ON CROSS-MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Before me are a motion for summary judgment by Plaintiff Theresa Bradford (ECF No. 21) and a motion for summary judgment by Defendants Naples Causeway Development, LLC and Richard Dyke (ECF No. 27). For the reasons set forth below, the Plaintiff's motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART and the Defendants' motion is DENIED.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND[1]
The White Pines Inn (the “Inn”) is a motel in Raymond, Maine owned by Defendant Naples Causeway Development, LLC (“NCD”). Pl.'s SMF ¶ 1; Defs.' SMF ¶¶ 1, 3.
Defendant Richard Dyke is NCD's sole member. Defs.' SMF ¶¶ 1-2. The Inn property consists of a two-story house with a one-story wing on each side of the house, containing eleven rental units. Defs.' SMF ¶ 4. The Inn's office is located on the first floor of the house, which also includes a full kitchen, large living room three bedrooms, and three bathrooms. Defs.' SMF ¶ 4.
Starting in August of 2013, NCD began operating the Inn by renting the eleven rental units as motel rooms. Defs.' SMF ¶ 5. Jennifer Daruszka was the Inn's first manager from July of 2013 until mid-April of 2016. Defs.' SMF ¶ 7. NCD provided an expense-free, year-round home for Ms. Daruszka and her family in the Inn's two-story house. Defs.' SMF ¶ 5. After Ms. Daruszka resigned in April of 2016 the Plaintiff, Theresa Bradford, took over as manager. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 3; Defs.' SMF ¶ 7. Richard Dyke interviewed and hired Ms. Bradford, and NCD employed Ms Bradford as manager of the Inn from April 12, 2016 through September 5, 2019. Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 3, 7; Defs.' SMF ¶¶ 30, 44.
When Ms. Bradford was hired, the Defendants offered to compensate her, and she agreed to be compensated, with a weekly salary of $250 plus an expense-free fulltime residence in the two-story house at the center of the Inn building. Defs.' SMF ¶ 33. There was no written agreement about Ms. Bradford's employment arrangement. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 52; Defs.' SMF ¶ 62. Marie Caron, an accountant for NCD, discussed the Inn manager job with Ms. Bradford before she was hired.[2] Defs. SMF ¶ 58. Ms. Caron maintained handwritten notes that she had taken before and during the discussion, which reflect an offer of “$1, 000/month, including residence and utilities.” Defs.' SMF ¶ 58; Pl.'s Reply SMF Ex. 3 (“Caron Notes”) (ECF No. 41-3). After making the initial offer of $250 per week, NCD increased Ms. Bradford's weekly pay to be the equivalent of the then-current minimum wage for forty hours of work each week.[3] Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 13-16; Defs.' SMF ¶ 34. During her employment, Ms. Bradford's weekly pay was as follows: $274.15 for most of 2016; $360 in 2017; $400 in 2018; and $440 in 2019. Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 13-16; Defs.' SMF ¶ 34.
While Ms. Bradford served as Inn manager from April of 2016 to September of 2019, she and her husband lived on the Inn property for free, paying no rent, taxes, utilities, or maintenance costs. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 3; Defs.' SMF ¶ 35. Ms. Bradford was told that she would stay at the house to oversee the Inn property and that she and her husband could treat the house as if it were their own home. Defs.' SMF ¶ 69; Pl.'s SMF ¶ 53. NCD placed no restrictions on Ms. Bradford as to the number of people that could live with her, and for about eight months (from late 2018 to early August of 2019), Ms. Bradford's daughter, son-in-law, and two small grandchildren also lived with Ms. Bradford for free in the house at the Inn. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 53; Defs.' SMF ¶¶ 35, 46.
During her tenure, Ms. Bradford was NCD's only employee and was the sole person responsible for the management of the Inn. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 6. Before hiring Ms. Bradford, Mr. Dyke and Ms. Caron talked about the Inn manager's job duties, and Ms. Caron discussed them with Ms. Bradford. Defs. SMF ¶ 58; see Caron Notes. Ms. Bradford's job duties included: taking reservations, monitoring and responding to emails, and checking guests in and out; cleaning rooms[4] and doing laundry; turning the vacancy sign on at 9:00 in the morning and off at 9:00 at night; being available in person or by phone from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. to assist guests; and preparing a weekly occupancy report and receipts for Ms. Caron. Defs.' SMF ¶ 8; Pl.'s SMF ¶ 21. She also ordered all supplies, ran Inn-related errands, and performed light maintenance such as changing lightbulbs, painting, cleaning the game room, watering and weeding flower beds, and shoveling snow. Defs.' SMF ¶ 8; Pl.'s SMF ¶ 21. In spring and fall, Ms. Bradford did a more major cleaning that involved pulling all of the furniture out of the rooms, shampooing carpets, washing walls, and cleaning the bathrooms, dressers, nightstands, refrigerators, microwaves, televisions and stands, chairs, windows, and outside screens. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 22. She also took care of the flower boxes and holiday decorations and attended chamber of commerce events. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 21.
Ms. Bradford was responsible for the Inn during the hours it was open, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. every day. Defs.' SMF ¶ 64. According to the Plaintiff, she worked from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. seven days a week year-round, and her job duties consumed all of that working time. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 19; Defs.' SMF ¶ 74. From October of 2018 through April of 2020, a FedEx delivery driver saw Ms. Bradford working every time the driver made deliveries to the Inn between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., including on the weekends. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 27. Neither Mr. Dyke nor Ms. Caron ever put a limit on the number of hours Ms. Bradford was supposed to work. Defs.' SMF ¶ 64. The Defendants, however, felt that “common sense as to what it takes to clean and prepare a room for rental” meant that Ms. Bradford's position was far less than forty hours a week. Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 45-46. According to the Defendants, the agreement with Ms. Bradford was that she would work as much or as little as needed to manage the Inn, get paid a fixed weekly salary, and have a free place to live for herself and her family. Defs.' SMF ¶ 50.
No one kept a record of the hours that Ms. Bradford worked. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 39; Defs.' SMF ¶ 51. The Defendants did not give Ms. Bradford any instruction on how to track her hours. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 41. There was no time clock or time sheet to track her hours, and the Defendants did not ask Ms. Bradford to sign in or out when she was or was not working. Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 40, 42. Ms. Bradford never reported to Mr. Dyke or Ms. Caron that she worked more than forty hours in any week. Defs.' SMF ¶ 52; Pl.'s SMF ¶ 72. The Defendants did not know how many hours Ms. Bradford worked each week. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 43. Instead, they paid her the same flat-fee salary-the equivalent of Maine's minimum hourly wage for a forty-hour workweek-regardless of how many hours she worked in a week. Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 9, 43-44; Defs.' SMF ¶ 34. The greatest variable in how long it took to perform the listed manager duties was the number of rooms turning over, which was far greater in the summer than in the rest of the year. Defs.' SMF ¶ 20. One Monday morning in July, after Ms. Bradford had ten rooms to check out in one day, Ms. Caron emailed Ms. Bradford:
I see it was another good week! I'm quite sure you were exhausted yesterday! Also please be sure to let me know if you work more than 40 hours per week by Sunday night so that I can enter payroll first thing on Monday mornings.
Pl.'s SMF ¶ 48.
When Ms. Bradford had more Inn work than she could get done on her own in a given day, she enlisted the help of her mother or her daughter and paid them out of her own pocket. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 31. She never told NCD that she had too much work or needed the help; NCD would have reimbursed her if she had told anyone. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 31. Ms. Bradford's husband also helped her every day with tasks for which he did not get paid, like vacuuming and shampooing rugs, deep-cleaning rooms, cleaning the game room, and weed-whacking. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 32. According to the Bradfords, Mr. Bradford told Defendant Dyke that the job took more than forty hours, and Mr. Dyke joked that he got two innkeepers for the price of one. Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 33, 38. Mr. Dyke denies that Mr. Bradford told him that Ms. Bradford was working more than forty hours a week, and denies he joked to the Bradfords about two-for-one innkeepers. Pl.'s SMF ¶¶ 33, 72.
If Ms. Bradford needed to leave the Inn between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., she had to stay within twenty or thirty minutes of the Inn and leave her cell number on the door so she could be reached. Pl.'s SMF ¶ 20. Under the Inn manager's listed duties in Ms. Caron's notes from her interview with Ms. Bradford, Ms. Caron wrote:
Caron Notes. And Mr. Dyke told Ms. Bradford: Defs.' SMF ¶ 44. Ms. Bradford sometimes had to run errands for the Inn, go to a doctor's appointment, or get groceries during Inn hours. Defs.' SMF ¶¶ 45, 48, 73. During the months that Ms. Bradford's daughter's family lived with her Ms. Bradford sometimes drove her daughter to work thirty minutes away if her daughter's car broke down (which might have been once a week or once every two weeks), and she occasionally watched her grandchildren for thirty-minute periods. Defs.' SMF ¶¶ 47, 71-72. She might also take two breaks during the workday, but she was otherwise in the Inn's office and...
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