Sapp v. Horton's Laundry, Civil Action No. 433.

• Decision Date: 18 January 1944
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 433.
• Citation: 56 F. Supp. 901
• Parties: SAPP et al. v. HORTON'S LAUNDRY, Inc.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Georgia

56 F. Supp. 901

SAPP et al. v. HORTON'S LAUNDRY, Inc.

Civil Action No. 433.

District Court, N. D. Georgia, Rome Division.

January 18, 1944.

James Maddox, of Rome, Ga., for plaintiffs.

Barry Wright and Carlton Wright, both of Rome, Ga., for defendant.

UNDERWOOD, District Judge.

The above case came on regularly for trial and was tried to the Court without a jury.

Claudie Sapp, Carrie Dean, Lilla Dozier and Laura Cheeks, hereinafter called "plaintiffs," together with a number of others who dismissed their petitions prior to trial, sued defendant, an operator of a laundry in Rome, Georgia, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq., to recover alleged unpaid minimum wages, overtime compensation and additional amounts as liquidated damages and attorney's fees.

Findings of Fact.

Plaintiffs claim that while working for defendant they were engaged in the production of goods for interstate commerce and were entitled to the benefits of the Fair Labor Standards Act; that the work that they were engaged in was part of the process of manufacture of goods which afterwards moved in interstate commerce.

There were three classes of goods in the processing of which plaintiffs claim they aided, chenille bedspreads, laundry done for soldiers stationed at Camp McClelland in Alabama, and certain bed sheets pressed and folded for Dellinger & Company, a manufacturer of chenille bedspreads.

The only work that plaintiffs allege that they did on the chenille bedspreads was folding them after they had been laundered These bedspreads came into the laundry from two sources, some from manufacturers, who sold them in both interstate and intrastate commerce, and others from the people of Rome for ordinary domestic laundry service.

While plaintiffs testified that they folded bedspreads which were sent in by the manufacturers and which ultimately got into interstate commerce, the testimony showed, and I find, that none of the bedspreads that went into interstate commerce was folded, but only those were folded that were laundered in the domestic service. Plaintiffs, therefore, were not engaged in the production of goods for interstate commerce as far as the bedspreads were concerned.

With respect to the work done on the Camp McClelland laundry, the Court finds that this was merely a laundry service and had nothing to do with the production of goods for commerce. None of plaintiffs was engaged in the actual interstate transportation of the articles in question, but merely participated in the laundering of them after they were delivered at the laundry. The Court finds, therefore, with respect to this work, that plaintiffs were neither engaged in interstate commerce nor in the production of goods for interstate commerce.

That leaves only to be considered the third class of goods upon which plaintiffs worked. These were certain sheets laundered for Dellinger & Company. These sheets were made of remnants of goods left from the manufacture of bedspreads, such remnants being sewed together into sheets. They were first made by Dellinger &...