Longlois v. Stratasys, Inc.

• Decision Date: 24 February 2015
• Docket Number: No. 13–cv–3345 JNE/SER.,13–cv–3345 JNE/SER.
• Citation: 88 F.Supp.3d 1058
• Parties: Charles LONGLOIS, Plaintiff, v. STRATASYS, INC., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Minnesota

88 F.Supp.3d 1058

Charles LONGLOIS, Plaintiff

v.STRATASYS, INC., Defendant.

No. 13–cv–3345 JNE/SER.

United States District Court, D. Minnesota.

Signed Feb. 24, 2015.

Eric D. Satre, Jarvis C. Jones, Jones Satre & Weimer, Bloomington, MN, for Plaintiff.

Gregory L. Peters, Corie J. Tarara, Seaton, Peters & Revnew, PA, Minneapolis, MN, for Defendant.

ORDER

JOAN N. ERICKSEN, District Judge.

Plaintiff Charles Longlois brings this action under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., alleging that he worked overtime hours for which his former employer, Defendant Stratasys, Inc., did not properly compensate him. The case is before the Court on the parties' cross-motions for summary judgment and on Longlois' motion to exclude the testimony of Stratasys' two expert witnesses.

For the reasons and in the manner set forth below, both of Longlois' motions are granted in part and denied in part, while Stratasys' motion is denied.

Background

Stratasys manufactures and distributes three-dimensional printers. The company provides installation and maintenance services for those printers through its Field Service Engineers (“FSEs”), salaried employees in the customer service department who work out of their homes and travel to client sites on assignments given to them by a supervisor. Stratasys hired its first FSE in 1995, at which time it classified the position as exempt from the FLSA's overtime requirements.

Stratasys first hired Longlois as an FSE in 1997; he left the company in 2000. Longlois was re-hired as an FSE in 2007, and he continued working for Stratasys in that capacity until August of 2014. Longlois' second stint with Stratasys is the focus of this action.

During that period, one of Longlois' colleagues, Greg Holaway, raised concerns that FSEs were routinely working substantial overtime hours for which they were not being properly compensated. Holaway was subsequently fired, for reasons that are disputed. Thereafter, in April of 2012, Holaway filed a putative collective action in this District, alleging that Stratasys was in violation of the FLSA with respect to its classification of FSEs as exempt from the statute's overtime requirements and its corresponding failure to pay the FSEs a premium for their overtime hours. Holaway v. Stratasys et al., No. 12–cv–998 (PAM/JSM). That case was conditionally certified as a collective action in October of 2012. Notice was then provided to all United States-based FSEs who had worked for Stratasys since October of 2009. Three of them—Longlois, Duane Schwarze, and Dale Wilson—opted in to the lawsuit. (Wilson was subsequently dismissed from the case on the joint stipulation of the parties.)

In January of 2013, as the Holaway case moved forward, Stratasys reclassified its FSEs as non-exempt employees. With this change, Stratasys began compensating Longlois and his fellow FSEs for any overtime worked using the “fluctuating workweek” method described at 29 C.F.R. § 778.114. Longlois agreed to this arrangement, and therefore seeks no damages for the period after January of 2013; his claim relates only to the preceding period, during which it is undisputed that Stratasys never paid him or any other FSE an overtime premium.

Discovery proceeded in the Holaway matter through the fall of 2013, at which time Stratasys filed a motion to decertify the case as a collective action. In a decision that issued in October of 2013, the Holaway court granted that motion, finding that Holaway, Longlois, and Schwarze's claims each required a fact-specific inquiry that would negate any efficiency to be gained from maintaining the case as a collective action. As a result, Longlois and Schwarze were removed from the Holaway action. That case then moved forward with Holaway as the lone plaintiff.

After the decertification of Holaway, Longlois and Schwarze jointly filed this action against Stratasys in December of 2013, asserting a single count under the FLSA for unpaid overtime compensation. Later that same month, the Court in Holaway granted Stratasys' motion for summary judgment. In so doing, the Court did not reach the question of whether Stratasys had misclassified Holaway as an exempt employee. Instead, it concluded that Holaway's claim failed, regardless of whether he had been misclassified, because he had not put forth sufficient evidence on which a jury could find that he had worked overtime hours for Stratasys. Holaway appealed that decision.

Meanwhile, this action proceeded. In May of 2014, the United States Magistrate Judge severed Schwarze from the case, an order which the Court affirmed in June of 2014. Schwarze has since filed a separate case of his own against Stratasys. Schwarze v. Stratasys, Inc. et al., No. 14–cv–2043 (PJS/JJK).

Thus proceeding alone here, Longlois filed a motion in September of 2014 seeking partial summary judgment on a number of the affirmative defenses Stratasys asserted in its Answer, as well as a Daubert motion targeting Stratasys' two expert witnesses. After briefing on those motions was completed, the Eighth Circuit issued its decision in Holaway, affirming the district court's grant of summary judgment to Stratasys. Holaway v. Stratasys, 771 F.3d 1057 (8th Cir.2014). Shortly thereafter, in November of 2014, Stratasys filed its motion for summary judgment here. The Court heard oral argument on the three pending motions together.

Discussion

Longlois claims that Stratasys violated the FLSA by failing to pay him at overtime rates when he worked more than forty hours in a week during the period prior to January of 2013.

As a general rule subject to certain exceptions, the FLSA prohibits an employer from “employ[ing] any of his employees ... for a workweek longer than forty hours unless such employee receives compensation for his employment in excess of [forty] hours ... at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.” 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). See also Jarrett v. ERC Properties, Inc., 211 F.3d 1078, 1081 (8th Cir.2000) (“The FLSA requires covered employers to compensate non-exempt employees at overtime rates for time worked in excess of statutorily-defined maximum hours.”). If an employer violates this provision, the statute provides for the employee to recover, through a private cause of action, “in the amount of [his] unpaid overtime compensation ... and in an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.” 29 U.S.C. § 216(b).

Longlois' claim for those damages implicates a number of discrete issues, which the parties address in depth on the three pending motions. The Court begins with Longlois' Daubert motion, and will then move to the parties' competing motions for summary judgment.

I. Daubert motion.

With his Daubert motion, Longlois urges the Court to exclude the proposed testimony of the two expert witnesses Stratasys has designated to testify at trial, Alexander Passantino and Neil Lapidus.

It should be noted at the outset that the parties initially debated the timing of Longlois' motion. Stratasys previously designated Passantino and Lapidus as its testifying experts in the Holaway matter, at a time when Longlois and Schwarze were participating in that suit as opt-in plaintiffs. Accordingly, the reports that were disclosed and the depositions that were taken of Passantino and Lapidus during discovery in the Holaway litigation pertain not only to Holaway's unpaid overtime claim, but also to Longlois' and Schwarze's.

In this action, the Scheduling Order called for Stratasys to disclose the identity of its expert witnesses by November 1, 2014, for their reports to be provided to Longlois by December 1, and for their depositions to be completed by December 15. Longlois, however, filed his Daubertmotion in late September of 2014, before Stratasys had designated any experts here and more than a month before its deadline for doing so. Consequently, Stratasys objected to the motion as premature, but it did also respond on the merits of the issues raised by Longlois.

Prior to oral argument, Longlois informed the Court that Stratasys did in fact designate both Passantino and Lapidus as its testifying experts by the November 1 deadline, and Stratasys did not persist in its objection to the timing of the Daubert motion at the hearing. With that said, there has been no mention from the parties that either Passantino or Lapidus provided Longlois with a new or supplemental report specific to this case, or that any additional depositions were taken of them. Therefore, in the absence of any indication to the contrary from the parties, the Court understands the expert reports and depositions taken during the Holaway litigation and submitted by Longlois to be the operative materials here, and considers the merits of the Daubert motion to have been fully argued.

Turning to the substance of Longlois' motion, then, it is Stratasys' burden as the proponent of the experts' testimony to establish its admissibility by a preponderance of the evidence. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 592 n. 10, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993). To do so, Stratasys must show that the proposed testimony meets the “three prerequisites” of Federal Rule of Evidence 702 : (1) that the witness is “qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education,” such that he is able to “assist the trier of fact” with matters within his area of expertise; (2) that his testimony will be relevant, such that it “will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue”; and (3) that his testimony will be “reliable or trustworthy in an evidentiary sense, so that, if the finder of fact accepts it as true, it provides the assistance the finder of fact requires.” Lauzon v. Senco Products, Inc., 270 F.3d 681, 686 (8th Cir.2001) (internal quotation omitted); Fed. R. Evid. 702.

For the reasons discussed below, Lapidus' proposed testimony is admissible, but Passantino's is not.

A. Passantino.

Alexander...