Perez v. El Tequila, LLC, Case No. 12-CV-588-JED-PJC
| Decision Date | 10 July 2015 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 12-CV-588-JED-PJC |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Oklahoma |
| Parties | THOMAS E. PEREZ, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor Plaintiff, v. EL TEQUILA, LLC, and CARLOS AGUIRRE, Individually, Defendants. |
Before the Court is the United States Secretary of Labor's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 190, 191). The Secretary claims that the defendants willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act's recordkeeping, overtime, and minimum wage provisions, and as a result are liable for $2,225,392.62, half of which is back pay and half liquidated damages. The Secretary argues that the undisputed material facts entitle him to an order granting summary judgment and enjoining future violations of the Act. For the reasons set forth below, the Motion is granted in part.
The United States Secretary of Labor (the "Secretary") brings this action pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act (the "FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-262. The Secretary alleges that defendants (1) have failed to pay employees the statutory minimum wage, (2) have failed to pay employees for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week, and (3) have failed to maintain required records of employees' wages and hours. (Doc. 165 at 4-5). The Secretary seeks judgment for unpaid wages, an equal sum as liquidated damages, and an order enjoiningdefendants from committing future FLSA violations. (Doc. 191 at 1). Unless specifically noted, the following facts are undisputed.
Defendant Carlos Aguirre controls the operations of defendant El Tequila, LLC (jointly the "defendants"), and through it operates four Mexican-style restaurants in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma. On December 21, 2010, as a result of an employee complaint, the United States Department of Labor (the "DOL"), through its Wage and Hour Division, began to investigate one of the defendants' restaurants, located at 5001 S. Harvard Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74135 (the "First Harvard Investigation"). As a part of the First Harvard Investigation, Aguirre provided Wage Hour Inspector ("WHI") Ybelka Saint-Hilaire with payroll summary sheets that he would later admit did not accurately reflect payments made to his employees. When Saint-Hilaire closed the First Harvard Investigation on March 23, 2011, she made a finding of recordkeeping violations only.
Three months later, on June 29, 2011, Saint-Hilaire began a second investigation of the Harvard restaurant (the "Second Harvard Investigation"). As a result of the second investigation, Saint-Hilaire determined that, from December 5, 2009, to August 6, 2011, the defendants paid their Harvard location employees a fixed weekly salary, rather than an hourly wage, in violation of the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the FLSA. The defendants settled the Second Harvard Investigation by agreeing to future compliance with the FLSA and to pay wages owed to their Harvard employees for the December 5, 2009, to August 6, 2011, period (the "Harvard Settlement"). Although the defendants made installment payments, Aguirre has since admitted that a number of his employees cashed their checks and returned the money to him.
After the defendants agreed to settle the Second Harvard Investigation, Saint-Hilaire met with the defendants to obtain time and pay records for the defendants' three other restaurants. The defendants have admitted that employees at all four of their restaurants performed the same types of work, worked the same hours, were paid the same way, and that records were maintained in the same manner. As part of the investigation of the three remaining restaurants, the defendants provided Saint-Hilaire with handwritten timesheets purporting to record the hours employees started and ended work each day.
On November 11, 2011, the defendants hired counsel for the first time. According to the defendants, they had understood the Harvard Settlement to account for violations at all four restaurants and, alarmed to learn they might owe still more money, they retained counsel. The parties were unable to reach a settlement regarding the three remaining restaurants.
In an apparent effort to bring their restaurants into compliance with the FLSA, the defendants replaced the handwritten timesheets with Casio QT 6600 register machines, which record electronically time worked by the defendants' employees. The time reports produced by the machines can be altered, and the defendants, by failing to respond to allegations in the Secretary's Third Amended Complaint, have admitted that they altered these reports to reduce the number of worked hours recorded.
On October 22, 2012, the Secretary filed suit against the defendants, alleging willful violations of the FLSA beginning in October 2009.
Summary judgment is appropriate "if the movant shows that there is 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); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-23 (1986); Anderson v. LibertyLobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250 (1986). In considering a summary judgment motion, courts determine "whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law." Anderson, 477 at 251-52. The evidence of the nonmovant is to be taken as true, and all justifiable inferences are to be drawn in the nonmovant's favor. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255; see also Ribeau v. Katt, 681 F.3d 1190, 1194 (10th Cir. 2012). "Credibility determinations, the weighing of evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions, not those of a judge . . . ruling on a motion for summary judgment. . . ." Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255. "[A]t the summary judgment stage the judge's function is not himself to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial." Anderson, 477 U.S. at 249.
"When the moving party has carried its burden under Rule 56[a], its opponent must do more than simply show that there is some metaphysical doubt as to the material facts." Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp, 475 U.S. 574, 586-87 (1986) (citations omitted). When the record, taken as a whole, "could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the non-moving party, there is no genuine issue for trial." Id. (quotations omitted). "The mere existence of a scintilla of evidence in support of the plaintiff's position will be insufficient; there must be evidence on which the [trier of fact] could reasonably find for the plaintiff." Anderson, 477 U.S. at 252. In its review, the Court construes the record in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment. Garratt v. Walker, 164 F.3d 1249, 1251 (10th Cir. 1998).
Congress designed the FLSA to prohibit "labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being ofworkers." 29 U.S.C. § 202(a). The FLSA seeks to meet this goal in part by setting forth wage, hour, and overtime standards. Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., 131 S. Ct. 1325, 1333 (2011).
Covered employers must pay their employees a minimum wage provided by the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. § 206, and overtime pay for work in excess of forty hours a week, 29 U.S.C. § 207. "The purpose of FLSA overtime is 'to compensate those who labored in excess of the statutory maximum number of hours for the wear and tear of extra work and to spread employment through inducing employers to shorten hours because of the pressure of extra cost.'" Chavez v. City of Albuquerque, 630 F.3d 1300, 1304 (10th Cir. 2011) (quoting Bay Ridge Operating Co. v. Aaron, 334 U.S. 446, 460 (1948)). The FLSA requires employers to compensate employees for overtime hours "at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which [the employee] is employed." 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). In order to facilitate compliance with and enforcement of the requirements of the Act, the FLSA requires a covered employer to keep records "of the persons employed by him and of the wages, hours, and other conditions and practices of employment maintained by him." 29 U.S.C. § 211(c).
In their Response to the Secretary's summary judgment motion, the defendants argue that their violations of the FLSA were not willful, that the Secretary has miscalculated the amount of back pay owed by the defendants, that liquidated damages should not be awarded, and that an injunction is not warranted. (Doc. 213 at 8-20). The defendants do not contest the Secretary's claims that they are "employers" under the FLSA or that they violated the FLSA's minimum wage, overtime, and recordkeeping provisions.1
Once a party moving for summary judgment has met its initial burden, the party resisting the motion cannot rest on its pleadings. Coffey v. Healthtrust, Inc., 955 F.2d 1388, 1393 (10th Cir. 1992) (citing Security National Bank v. Belleville Livestock Commission, 619 F.2d 840, 848 (10th Cir. 1979)). Rather, the party opposing summary judgment bears the burden of informing a court of the reasons, legal or factual, why summary judgment should not be entered. The Court's local rule governing summary judgment procedure, LCvR56.1, provides in subpart (c) that "[a]ll material facts set forth in the statement of the material facts of the movant shall be deemed admitted for the purpose of summary judgment unless specifically controverted by the statement of material facts of the opposing party." Although a district court may, in its discretion, go beyond referenced portions of submitted evidentiary materials, it is not required to do so and should be wary of making a party's case for it. Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 672 (10th Cir. 1998). With respect to legal arguments specifically, a district court...
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