Prickett v. Dekalb County

• Decision Date: 29 March 2000
• Docket Number: No. Civ.A. 1:97CV3395TWT.,Civ.A. 1:97CV3395TWT.
• Citation: 92 F.Supp.2d 1357
• Parties: Christopher D. PRICKETT, et al., Plaintiff, v. DeKALB COUNTY, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Georgia

92 F.Supp.2d 1357

Christopher D. PRICKETT, et al., Plaintiff, v. DeKALB COUNTY, Defendant.

No. Civ.A. 1:97CV3395TWT.

United States District Court, N.D. Georgia, Atlanta Division.

March 29, 2000.

Allan Leroy Parks, Jr., Harlan Stuart Miller, III, Parks Chesin & Miller, Atlanta, GA, for plaintiffs.

Joan Frances Roach, Jonathan A. Weintraub, Office of DeKalb County Attorney, DeKalb County Administration Building, Decatur, GA, Benton J. Mathis, Jr., Dana Kristin Maine, Freeman Mathis & Gary, Atlanta, GA, for Dekalb County, defendant.

ORDER

THRASH, District Judge.

This is an action brought by current and former Fire Services Bureau employees of the DeKalb County Department of Public Safety. They seek overtime compensation pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. The case is before the Court on Motions for Summary Judgment [Doc. 75 & 76] filed by Plaintiffs and Defendant. For the reasons set forth below, the Court denies Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment and grants Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs are 426 current and former Fire Services Bureau employees of the DeKalb County Department of Public Safety. Defendant DeKalb County ("the County") is a political subdivision of the State of Georgia. The County's Department of Public Safety is divided into nine separate divisions: the Fire Services Bureau, the Police Services Bureau, the Emergency Medical Services Bureau, the Administrative Services Bureau, the Communications Division, Animal Control, Internal Affairs, the Intelligence Unit, and the Emergency Management Unit. Prior to 1994, the County paid overtime compensation to employees of the Emergency Medical Services ("EMS") Bureau only within the parameters of a partial exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). The County believed the exception protected it from having to pay EMS employees overtime pay based on a general 40 hour work week. In 1994, however, the County abandoned this policy after Judge Jack T. Camp of this Court ruled that the County could not rely on the FLSA partial exemption in refusing to provide overtime compensation to its EMS employees for hours in excess of 40 worked during a single week.

Plaintiffs allege that Judge Camp's decision regarding the EMS employees' right to overtime pay, continual budget constraints, shortages of EMS vehicles and personnel, a view among County political leaders that firefighters are underutilized if all they do is wait for fire calls, and a decline in the number of fire calls all combined to cause the County to reevaluate how it should provide emergency services to its residents. According to Plaintiffs, if the County had continued to meet its residents' EMS needs with only employees of the EMS Bureau, its costs would have escalated drastically once these employees were entitled to overtime compensation pursuant to the FLSA's general provisions. If, however, the County transferred some EMS duties to another bureau whose employees fall within a partial exemption to the FLSA, it likely could contain its costs more readily.

As a result, Plaintiffs allege that the County began to utilize employees of the Fire Services Bureau for medical emergencies that EMS employees alone would have responded to before Judge Camp's 1994 decision. Since this change, a majority of calls answered by the Fire Services Bureau have been for medical emergencies unrelated to fires. For example, in 1995, the Fire Services Bureau answered 17,558 medical emergency calls, 4,104 fire calls, and 8,622 unspecified "other" calls. In 1996, it answered 19,733 medical emergencies, 4,027 fire calls, and 10,028 other calls. That trend continued in the first four months of 1997, when the Fire Services Bureau answered 5,973 medical emergencies, 1,243 fire calls, and 3,010 other calls. Today, as a matter of dispatch protocol, the Fire Services Bureau routinely answers calls for such medical emergencies as insulin shock, chest pain, motor vehicle and pedestrian accidents, choking, diabetic comas, seizures, severe bleeding, drowning, gunshot and stab wounds, strokes and heart attacks, and industrial accidents. Furthermore, certification as an emergency medical technician has become a prerequisite for hiring and promotion within the Fire Services Bureau.

Calls, however, do not account for most of the firefighters' work time. Pursuant to an Order entered by this Court on November 16, 1998, discovery was limited to firefighters' activities at four representative fire stations between January 1, 1997, and June 30, 1997. DeKalb County compiled and provided to Plaintiffs activity data from both these four stations' logbooks and the National Fire Institute Reporting System ("NFIRS") computer program. While slight discrepancies exist between the two reporting systems because the NFIRS method counts each incident only once regardless of how many stations report to the scene, both sources nevertheless show that DeKalb firefighters during this time spent little more than ten percent of their time answering any calls — and less than four percent of their time answering medical emergency calls. The station logbooks show that the total amount of time firefighters spent responding to all calls during the representative time period was 10.16% of their total work time, and 3.76% of their time was spent responding to medical emergency calls. The NFIRS information shows that the total amount of time firefighters spent responding to medical emergency calls was 3.48%.

Plaintiffs contend that their involvement in responding to medical emergency calls prevents DeKalb County from claiming the FLSA's partial exemption. They filed this action on November 10, 1997, naming DeKalb County, Public Safety Director Thomas Brown, and then — Fire Chief Carlos E. Perez as Defendants. Plaintiffs did not raise individual capacity claims against Defendants Brown and Perez and failed to state a claim against them in their official capacities, so this Court, in an Order dated December 1, 1998 [Doc. 42], granted Brown and Perez's Motions to Dismiss pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Both the Plaintiffs and DeKalb County have now filed Motions for Summary Judgment. Those motions are the subject of this Order.

II. SUMMARY JUDGMENT STANDARD

Summary judgment is appropriate only when the pleadings, depositions, and affidavits submitted by the parties show that no genuine issue of material fact exists and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). The court should view the evidence and any inferences that may be drawn in light most favorable to the nonmovant. Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 158-159, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970). The party seeking summary judgment must first identify grounds that show the absence of a genuine issue of material fact. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323-24, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). The burden then shifts to the nonmovant, who must go beyond the pleadings and present affirmative evidence to show that a genuine issue of material fact does exist. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 257, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

III. DISCUSSION

A. CONSTITUTIONALITY OF APPLYING THE FLSA TO DEKALB COUNTY

DeKalb County contends that applying the FLSA to it is unconstitutional because the Eleventh Amendment protects the County from being subjected to a FLSA suit in federal court without its consent. The County bases its argument on United States Supreme Court rulings during the past 25 years that constrain Congress' power to use the Commerce Clause and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to abrogate states' Eleventh Amendment immunity. See, e.g., Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, ___ U.S. ___, 120 S.Ct. 631, 145 L.Ed.2d 522(2000) (holding that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA") does not validly abrogate states' Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit by private individuals); Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 144 L.Ed.2d 636 (1999) (holding that states are entitled to sovereign immunity from FLSA suits brought in state court); Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 72-73, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996) (holding that Congress cannot use its commerce power to abrogate states' sovereign immunity from suits in federal court); National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 851-52, 96 S.Ct. 2465, 49 L.Ed.2d 245 (1976) (holding that Congress' use of its power to regulate commerce cannot abrogate a state's sovereign immunity), overruled by Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528, 531, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985) (holding that application of the FLSA to states and their political subdivisions does not contravene any limit on Congress' commerce power).

The County's brief is well-written, but adopting its arguments would lead this Court to an incorrect application of current law.¹ Despite criticism in the last 20 years from some legal scholars who have argued that counties, as political subdivisions of the states, should be immune pursuant to the Eleventh Amendment from unconsented suits in federal court, e.g., John V. Orth, The Judicial Power of the United States 119 (1987); Vicki C. Jackson, One Hundred Years of Folly: The Eleventh Amendment and the 1988 Term, 64 S.Cal. L.Rev. 51, 57 n. 23 (1990); Margreth Barrett, Comment, The Denial of Eleventh Amendment Immunity to Political Subdivisions of the States: An Unjustified Strain on Federalism, 1979 Duke L.J. 1042, 1049 (1979), the Supreme Court continues to adhere to its holding in Lincoln County v. Luning, 133 U.S. 529, 530, 10 S.Ct. 363, 33 L.Ed. 766 (1890), that counties are not protected by the Eleventh Amendment from suit in federal court. See, e.g., Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 2267-69, 144 L.Ed.2d 636 (1999) ("The second important limit to the principle of sovereign immunity is that it bars suits against States but...