Brand v. Comcast Corp.
| Decision Date | 28 September 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 12 CV 1122,12 CV 1122 |
| Citation | 135 F.Supp.3d 713 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
| Parties | James Brand, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Comcast Corporation & Comcast Cable Communications Management, LLC, Defendants. |
Ryan F. Stephan, Andrew C. Ficzko, James B. Zouras, Teresa M. Becvar, Stephan Zouras, LLP, Leah M. Farmer, Noelle Christine Brennan, Noelle Brennan & Associates, Ltd, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs.
Sari M. Alamuddin, Allison Nugent Powers, Gregory P. Abrams, Ritu Srivastava, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, LLP, Chicago, IL, Alexandra S. Tuffuor, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, Boston, MA, Michael L. Banks, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP, Philadelphia, PA, for Defendants.
Cable line technicians James Brand, Barry Farmer, Mark Graham, Kevin Jackson, Michael Jackson, Jose Vigil, and Christopher Woodard (collectively, "the plaintiffs") sued their employers, Comcast Corporation and Comcast Cable Communications Management, LLC (together, "Comcast"), under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201, et seq., and the Illinois Minimum Wage Law ("IMWL"), 820 ILCS 105, et seq. , claiming that Comcast failed to pay them for compensable work time. Before the court are Comcast's motions for summary judgment with respect to each of the individual plaintiffs. For the following reasons, the motions are granted:
Procedural History
Plaintiff James Brand originally brought this suit in February 2012 as a purported collective action under the FLSA and as a class action under the IMWL and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act ("IWPCA"), 820 ILCS 115, et seq. In May 2012 the parties consented to the jurisdiction of this court for all further proceedings. (R. 27.) Shortly thereafter, Brand moved to conditionally certify a collective action under the FLSA. (R. 30.) In September 2012 this court granted that motion in part giving Brand permission to send notice of the collective action to "all individuals who were employed or are currently employed, by one or more of the defendants, its subsidiaries or affiliated companies, as line technicians or any similarly titled position at any time during the relevant statute of limitations period," but limiting notice to potential plaintiffs who have worked or work at Comcast's 112th Street facility in Chicago. (R. 56, Mem. Op. at 4, 7, 20.) Two months later, the court granted Comcast's motion to dismiss Brand's IWPCA claim. (R. 62.)
After several plaintiffs opted into the collective action and consented to this court's jurisdiction, (R. 118), the plaintiffs filed their third amended complaint, (R. 119). In this iteration of the complaint, the plaintiffs dropped their collective and class action allegations and instead brought their FLSA and IMWL claims as individuals.1 The plaintiffs allege that Comcast violated federal and state wage laws by failing to pay them for their overtime work. (Id.¶ 12.) Specifically, the plaintiffs claim that Comcast encouraged them to spend time before and after their shifts performing tasks such as reviewing assignments, checking routes, loading and unloading their vehicles, completing their vehicle checklist, and performing work on portable computers, but it did not pay them for performing these tasks. (Id.) Additionally, the plaintiffs allege that Comcast automatically deducted an hour from their schedule for daily meal breaks regardless of whether the plaintiffs worked through their breaks. (Id.) Finally, the plaintiffs assert that they are entitled to compensation for time they spent on call because they claimed that they were "highly restricted" during their on-call shifts. (Id.)
After a period of discovery, Comcast filed seven separate motions for summary judgment, one per each plaintiff left in the suit. (R. 136; R. 139; R. 142; R. 145; R. 148; R. 151; R. 154.) These motions are now fully briefed and ready for disposition. For the sake of efficiency, the court will address all seven motions in the current opinion.
The following undisputed facts apply across the board to all seven of the plaintiffs' claims. For ease of citation, the court will cite only to Brand's response to Comcast's Rule 56.1 statement of facts and Comcast's reply to Brand's additional facts with respect to the universally applicable facts.
Comcast provides cable, entertainment, and communications products and services in the state of Illinois. .) The plaintiffs are all current or former line technicians who work or have worked at Comcast's 112th Street facility in Chicago. Comcast employs line technicians to maintain its cable network infrastructure. (Id.¶ 6.) A line technician is responsible for maintaining node health, repairing outages, signal testing, and addressing other system issues for the network plant. (Id.) In particular, line technicians are charged with promptly identifying and restoring hard line plant issues. (Id.¶ 7.) Comcast provides line technicians with a company work vehicle that they can use only for Comcast business and not for personal purposes.
Comcast line technicians who work at the 112th Street facility are non-exempt employees who work three main shifts: 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; 12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.; and when they are on call, 3:00 p.m. to midnight. .) Line technicians could work either as "home garaging" technicians or "home dispatched" technicians. (Id.¶¶ 10–11.) A home garaging line technician volunteers to park his Comcast vehicle at home rather than at Comcast's garage. (Id.¶ 11.) A home garaging technician begins or ends each work day by driving between his home and a designated reporting location—such as a Comcast home office or meeting location—instead of driving directly to or from a customer's residence. (Id.) A home dispatched technician volunteers to drive his Comcast vehicle directly between his home and work assignments in the field. (Id.¶¶ 10, 12.) Home dispatched technicians are paid for the time spent driving between their home and their first assignment, but are not paid for time driving from their last assignment to their home, unless they are performing work activities during the drive. According to Comcast's Vehicle Use Policy, employees who use Comcast vehicles must maintain them in accordance with defined maintenance procedures and must complete a monthly vehicle inspection report. .) That responsibility currently includes a requirement that the line technician perform a daily safety check of the vehicle before driving it.
Comcast maintains a number of written policies that require line technicians to report all time worked and that forbid working off the clock. For example, Comcast employees must acknowledge receipt of an employee handbook which states that:
each employee agrees to record accurately all hours actually worked and further agrees not to misrepresent the hours worked either by overstating the actual hours or understating them. Employees must record, as time worked, any time performing services related to their duties or otherwise working on behalf of the Company, even if such time is prior to the scheduled shift start or stop time.
.) Comcast's Time Reporting Guidelines for home garaging and home dispatched line technicians instruct them not to perform any work related tasks before logging into the system to start their shift or logging out of the system to end it. (Id.¶ 19.) The guidelines also make clear that if a line technician does perform work related tasks before or after a shift, or if he or she works during a normally unpaid lunch period, he or she must "(i) notify his or her supervisor and (ii) properly record this work time on his/her time sheet." (Id.)
As for what activities constitute compensable work, Comcast policies state that work time includes any break lasting 20 minutes or less, noting that a "meal break is not considered time worked if the break lasts at least 30 minutes without interruption for work and you are relieved of all work duties." Comcast's "Getting Paid For Your Work: Time Recording Training for Hourly Employees" document ("Time Recording Training") states that "working off the clock is strictly prohibited." .) It also instructs line technicians to include the following activities at the beginning of the work day as work time: "[l]ogging into the computer and other electronic devices provided by the Company; [o]pening work applications; [p]icking up work equipment; [and p]erforming safety checks." (Id.¶ 25.) Similarly, it instructs line technicians to "record the exact time that you stop working at the end of your day," including as work time "any time spent at the end of the work day: [l]ogging out of the computer and other electronic devices; [c]losing work applications; [and u]nloading equipment." (Id.¶ 27.) Time spent retrieving, reading, or listening to work related emails and voice mails or communicating with supervisors, Comcast employees, or customers is included in the definition of work time. The Time Recording Training also states that employees should contact human resources if they feel they "are being forced to work off-the-clock," or alternatively, instructs them to contact a separate resource called "Comcast Listens" to report concerns about how they are paid. .)
The plaintiffs have all worked on-call shifts that can last for up to seven days. (Id.¶ 68.) These shifts are assigned on a...
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