Gennell v. FedEx Corp.
Decision Date | 19 March 2014 |
Docket Number | Opinion No. 2014 DNH 056,Case No. 05-cv-145-PB |
Parties | Robert Gennell, Jr., et al. v. FedEx Corp., et al. |
Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Hampshire |
The plaintiffs in this long-running dispute are a class of drivers based in New Hampshire who worked for defendant FedEx Ground Package System, Inc. ("FedEx").1 Plaintiffs claim, among other things, that they are entitled to be reimbursed for work-related expenses pursuant to section 275:57(I) of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes. This Memorandum and Order resolves the parties' cross-motions for summary judgment addressing the drivers' reimbursement claim.
In a prior order, I described the relationship between FedEx and its drivers as it existed during the class period. See Gennell v. FedEx Ground Package Sys., Inc., 2013 DNH 110, 2-6. As relevant here, each driver entered into a standard-form "Operating Agreement" ("OA") with FedEx. See Doc. No. 80-1. The OA requires each driver to purchase and bear "all costs and expenses incidental to operation" of their delivery vehicles, including the cost of fuel, maintenance, insurance, taxes, tolls, licenses, and other work-related expenses. Id.
The drivers agreed to the terms of the OA in order to obtain:
the advantage of operating within a system that will provide access to national accounts and the benefits of added revenues associated with shipments picked up and delivered by other contractors throughout the FedEx Ground system. In order to get that advantage, [the driver] is willing to commit to provide daily pick-up and delivery service, and to conduct his/her business so that it can be identified as being part of the FedEx Ground system.
Id. FedEx paid each driver a weekly "settlement" payment "for services provided" pursuant to the OA. Id. A driver's total weekly settlement payment was calculated according to a formula that included individual payments for stops made; for packages handled; for each day that a qualified, uniformed driver provided a clean, properly maintained vehicle; for each day that a driver picked up and delivered packages in a sparsely populated area; for each day that a driver participated in FedEx's "Flex Program"; for each mile driven each day in excessof 200 miles; and for each mile driven when the fuel price per gallon exceeded a specific threshold. Id.
Summary judgment is appropriate when the record reveals "no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). An issue is considered genuine if the evidence allows a reasonable jury to resolve the point in favor of the nonmoving party, and a fact is considered material if it "is one 'that might affect the outcome of the suit under the governing law.'" United States v. One Parcel of Real Prop. with Bldgs., 960 F.2d 200, 204 (1st Cir. 1992) (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986)). In ruling on a motion for summary judgment, I examine the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Navarro v. Pfizer Corp., 261 F.3d 90, 94 (1st Cir. 2001).
The party moving for summary judgment bears the initial burden of identifying the portions of the record it believes demonstrate an absence of disputed material facts. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). In determining what constitutes a material fact, "we safely can ignore 'conclusoryallegations, improbable inferences, and unsupported speculation.'" Carroll v. Xerox Corp., 294 F.3d 231, 237 (1st Cir. 2002) (quoting Medina-Munoz v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 896 F.2d 5, 8 (1st Cir. 1990)). On cross motions for summary judgment, the standard of review is applied to each motion separately. See Am. Home Assurance Co. v. AGM Marine Contractors, Inc., 467 F.3d 810, 812 (1st Cir. 2006).
The drivers claim that FedEx must reimburse them for certain expenses that the drivers agreed to assume in the OA. They base their claim on section 275:57(I) of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes (the "Reimbursement Statute"),2 which provides:
An employee who incurs expenses in connection with his or her employment and at the request of the employer, except those expenses normally borne by the employee as a precondition of employment, which are not paid for by wages, cash advance, or other means from the employer, shall be reimbursed for the payment of the expenses within 30 days of the presentation by the employee of proof of payment.
FedEx responds by invoking the exception in the statute for expenses "paid for by wages, cash advance, or other means."3 The assumptions underlying FedEx's interpretation of the exception are: (1) the Reimbursement Statute does not require an employer to reimburse an employee for expenses that are "paid for" by "wages"; (2) the "other means" by which an employer can pay for expenses and thereby avoid the duty to reimburse encompasses means of payment similar to "wages," see, e.g., State v.Beauchemin, 161 N.H. 654, 658 (2011) ; and (3) a payment that an employer makes to a statutory employee4 in exchange for an agreement to perform services and assume related expenses is subject to the exception because it is a means of payment similar to the payment of expenses with "wages." After proposing its interpretation of the exception, FedEx argues that the drivers are not entitled to be reimbursed for their expenses because the payments they received pursuant to the OA are the "other means" by which they were paid for their expenses.
The drivers attack both FedEx's interpretation of the exception and its attempt to apply the exception to the facts of this case. They concede that a worker classified as an employee under both statute and common law would have no right to reimbursement if he or she were to accept payment from anemployer in exchange for agreeing to assume work-related expenses.5 The drivers argue, however, that FedEx has misinterpreted the exception in this case because it does not apply at all to statutory employees who are classified as independent contractors under the common law and who are characterized as such by their employers. They also contend that FedEx's argument fails even if it has correctly interpreted the statute because the payments they received pursuant to the OA were expressly made solely for "services" and were never intended to serve as reimbursement for expenses. I find neither argument persuasive.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court takes a common sense approach to statutory interpretation. Words are given their plain and ordinary meaning unless context suggests otherwise. Appeal of the Local Gov't Ctr., Inc., No. 2012-729, 2014 WL 92992, at *7 (N.H. Jan. 10, 2014). The statute is construed aswritten and the court "will not consider what the legislature might have said or add language that the legislature did not see fit to include." Id. A court will "not consider words and phrases in isolation, but rather within the context of the statute as a whole." Id.
In this case, the applicability of the exception turns both on whether the expenses at issue were "paid for" by FedEx and, if so, whether the means of payment qualifies as an "other means."
The exception exempts work-related expenses assumed by an employee that are paid for by the employer via one of the designated categories of payment. It is generally understood that something is "paid for" when the payor "[p]erform[s] . . . an obligation by the delivery of money or some other valuable thing accepted in partial or full discharge of the obligation." See Black's Law Dictionary 1243 (9th ed. 2009) (defining "payment"). In this case, the parties' obligations were established by contract and the "valuable thing[s]" accepted by the drivers were their settlement payments.6 Thus, in cases suchas this where payments are made pursuant to contract, the term "paid for" may be aptly restated in contract parlance as "incurred in consideration for." See id. at 347 ( ); see also Appeal of Lorden, 134 N.H. 594, 600 (1991) , superseded by statute on other grounds, 1992 N.H. Laws 203:1.
The exception also describes the categories of payment that qualify for the exception. To characterize these categories, I first look to the manner in which the legislature has defined the same terms elsewhere in chapter 275, which codifies New Hampshire's employee-protective legislation. See, e.g., Paey v.Rodrigue, 119 N.H. 186, 188 (1979) ( ). The only relevant term that is expressly defined in chapter 275 is "wages." The legislature has defined "wages" in section 275:42(III) to mean "compensation, including hourly health and welfare, and pension fund contributions . . . for labor or services rendered by an employee, whether the amount is determined on a time, task, piece, commission, or other basis of calculation." Section 275:43(V) expands the scope of this definition: "Vacation pay, severance pay, personal days, holiday pay, sick pay, and payment of employee expenses, when such benefits are a matter of employment practice or policy, or both, shall be considered wages pursuant to RSA 275:42, III, when due."7...
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