Carroll v. C-Con Servs.
| Docket Number | CIVIL 4:21-CV-327-SDJ |
| Decision Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Parties | BETTY DIANE CARROLL v. C-CON SERVICES, INC., ET AL |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Texas |
Plaintiff Betty Diane Carroll brought suit against Defendants C-Con Services, Inc. and Earl B. Cotton, alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Following a one-week trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Carroll, concluding that C-Con had willfully failed to pay Carroll overtime wages, and that C-Con had retaliated against Carroll due to her requesting that she be paid overtime. For these injuries Carroll was awarded damages in the amounts of $139.99 in unpaid overtime and $4,848.00 in back pay.
Carroll now moves for judgment as a matter of law, requesting that the Court award her $42,816.02 on her overtime claim and $85,400.00 in back pay damages, notwithstanding the jury's verdict awarding lesser amounts. (Dkt. #73). In the alternative, Carroll requests that the Court either impose an additur to the jury's verdict in the amounts referenced above, or that the Court grant her request for a new trial to enable the jury to redetermine the damages owed to her. Finally, Carroll moves for liquidated damages and front pay, requesting $139.99 in liquidated damages and $158,266.00 in front pay damages. (Dkt. #72).
For the following reasons, the Court will grant in part both motions.
Betty Carroll began her employment with C-Con Services, Inc. on July 27, 2009, and she worked in various accounting-related roles with C-Con for over a decade. While Carroll's relationship with C-Con management-including C-Con owner and president Earl B. Cotton-was largely positive throughout Carroll's tenure at the company, this began to change following the installment of Amy Sewell as Carroll's direct supervisor in December 2019. Further straining Carroll's relationship with various C-Con management was the arrival of COVID-19 and the attendant difficulties imposed by the pandemic.
On February 5, 2021, Carroll received her first official “employee warning notice” from Sewell. Sewell discussed this warning notice with Carroll in a formal meeting held that same day, with Sewell apprising Carroll that she was concerned with Carroll's “[i]ncreased instances of data entry errors, reduction in satisfactorily managing job duties, failure to timely comply with requests for information and/or documents, [and] unwillingness to cooperate on team projects.” Also discussed in the warning meeting was Sewell's continued frustration with Carroll's practice of contacting upper-level management with questions and concerns without first contacting Sewell. The warning notice itself set out a multi-step plan that Carroll was required to comply with towards correcting the above-identified deficiencies, admonishing Carroll that failure to comply with the warning's commands would “result in further disciplinary action up to and including termination.” Carroll was given 60 days to comply with the warning and Sewell's instructions, and a follow-up meeting was scheduled for April 9, 2021. (Dkt. #66, Plaintiff's Exhibit 7). Both Carroll and Sewell signed the warning notice at the conclusion of this initial meeting.
Before the follow-up meeting and in contravention of Sewell's instruction to bring complaints and requests through her chain of command, on March 2, 2021, Carroll directly emailed Earl Cotton requesting that Cotton pay Carroll for unpaid overtime hours allegedly dating back to 2015. (Dkt. #66, Plaintiff's Exhibit 22). This demand apparently was grounded in a prior audit of C-Con by the United States Department of Labor (“DOL”) in 2015, which resulted in a DOL determination that, although C-Con had characterized Carroll as being a “salaried” employee, she was nonetheless entitled to overtime wages for any work performed in excess of forty hours per week. The 2015 DOL determination required C-Con to pay Carroll $4,018.18 for unpaid overtime that the DOL calculated that Carroll had worked between May 11, 2013, and May 9, 2015. (Dkt. #66, Plaintiff's Exhibit 18). Following the 2015 DOL report, C-Con responded by fixing the hours for all overtime-eligible employees at forty hours per week, further requiring that any overtime outside of the set forty hour schedule must be preapproved. (Dkt. #66, Plaintiff's Exhibit 37). In her March 2, 2021, email to Cotton, however, Carroll claimed to have worked between two-and-a-half to five hours per week in overtime each week from 2015 through 2021, even though no such overtime had been theretofore requested or approved.
Upon receipt of this email, Cotton forwarded the message to Sewell, with Cotton and Sewell ultimately concluding that Carroll should be given a second “employee warning notice.” Sewell texted Carroll that same day and requested that Carroll bring in her C-Con laptop the following day, March 3, 2021. On March 3, 2021, Cotton, Sewell, and C-Con vice president Richard Linnebur met with Carroll to discuss Carroll's second employee warning notice, this time specifically reprimanding Carroll for “insubordination” and for a failure to “[f]ollow verbal and written problem resolution procedures.” (Dkt. #66, Plaintiff's Exhibit 16). Carroll did not sign this notice, and Sewell testified that Carroll refused to answer any questions or to otherwise participate in the meeting. Following this interaction, the decision was made to terminate Carroll, with Carroll being fired that day. (Dkt. #66, Plaintiff's Exhibit 17).
In response to being terminated, on March 17, 2021, Carroll brough the instant suit against C-Con and Cotton in the 431st Judicial District Court in Denton County, alleging that C-Con and Cotton failed to pay her required overtime and fired her in retaliation for requesting overtime, all in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).
Specifically, Carroll asserted that C-Con and Cotton were both “employers” of Carroll under the FLSA, and that although the DOL had previously characterized Carroll's position as one requiring overtime, Carroll was nonetheless instructed “to work whatever hours [she] wished but not to write down more than 40 hours in a week for purposes of the time card” she was obligated to keep. Carroll further alleged that in her final week working for Defendants, Amy Sewell “changed [Carroll's FLSA] classification” from non-exempt to exempt, and that in addition, Sewell required her “to work more time to make up for time lost due to the historic [2021] ice storm in the DFW area,” resulting in Carroll working even more overtime. Finally, Carroll alleged that she was impermissibly retaliated against for requesting overtime pay, evidenced by the fact that she was fired the day after she emailed Cotton requesting overtime going back to 2015. Based on these alleged injuries, Carroll requested attorney's fees, court costs, statutory interest, liquidated damages, back pay and front pay.
Defendants removed the case to this Court on April 23, 2021, invoking the Court's federal question jurisdiction, given that Carroll's claims arose under the FLSA. Upon completion of discovery, no dispositive motions were filed by either side, although leading up to trial, Defendants sought leave to file a second amended answer, which included an affirmative defense that Carroll was an administratively exempt employee under the FLSA. The Court denied Defendants motion for leave and struck their second amended answer from the record, concluding that Defendants failed to satisfy the “good cause” standard required under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(b) for the amendment of pleadings outside of the time prescribed by the Court's scheduling order.[1]
The case was tried over a period of five days, from September 12, 2022, to September 16, 2022, and the jury returned a verdict on September 19, 2022. As to Carroll's overtime and retaliation claims, the jury found that Defendant C-Con Services, Inc. was liable.[2]Specifically, the jury concluded that Carroll had proven by a preponderance of the evidence that C-Con had failed to pay Carroll required overtime in the amount of $139.99, and that because of C-Con's retaliation in terminating Carroll for requesting overtime, C-Con was liable for $4,848.00 in back pay damages. (Dkt. #69).
Carroll takes issue with the jury's verdict, and now moves for judgment as a matter of law, additur, or new trial, as well as liquidated damages and front pay. In Carroll's view, the “undisputed evidence” shows that she is entitled to $42,816.02 in unpaid overtime, $85,400.00 in FLSA retaliation damages, $139.99 in liquidated damages, and $158,266.00 in front pay damages. Carroll also requests post-judgment interest on all amounts awarded through this suit. In response, C-Con counters that it adduced extensive evidence throughout the course of the trial which supports the jury's verdict, such that Carroll's requests for relief should be denied.
“A motion for judgment as a matter of law . . . in an action tried by jury is a challenge to the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting the jury's verdict.” SMI Owen Steel Co. v. Marsh USA, Inc., 520 F.3d 432, 437 (5th Cir. 2008) (quotation omitted). In ruling on a posttrial motion for judgment as a matter of law, the Court is “especially deferential to the verdict.” Mays v. Chevron Pipe Line Co. 968 F.3d 442, 447 (5th Cir. 2020) (quotation omitted). The Court must “review all of the evidence in the record, drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party; [it] may not make credibility determinations or weigh the evidence, as those are jury...
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