Spier v. Gulf Coast Beverages, 494.

• Decision Date: 30 June 1943
• Docket Number: No. 494.,494.
• Citation: 50 F. Supp. 653
• Parties: SPIER et al. v. GULF COAST BEVERAGES, Inc.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

50 F. Supp. 653

SPIER et al. v. GULF COAST BEVERAGES, Inc.

Civil Action, No. 494.

District Court, S. D. Florida.

June 30, 1943.

S. S. Sandford and E. R. Dickenson, both of Tampa, Fla., for plaintiffs.

George A. Gibbs, of Tampa, Fla., for defendant.

BARKER, District Judge.

The complaint in this cause was filed by five plaintiffs, all former employees of the defendant corporation, seeking to recover compensation for alleged overtime, in various amounts, claimed to be due them by the defendant, under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq.; an amended complaint was filed and also an amended answer.

In its amended answer the defendant avers: That it is a corporation, organized as a bottling company, to do only a local and intrastate business, and that its principal business is that of bottling and selling soft drinks to the local trade, and that "occasional orders from bottlers operating outside the State of Florida" were received and filled by the defendant, but they were purely incidental and occasional; further that during the period from August 1939, the earliest date any of the plaintiffs were employed by it, to September 10, 1941, it made fifty-one (51) shipments in interstate commerce, which with their respective dates are shown on Exhibit "A" to the answer; that on the latter date it discontinued making any interstate shipments whatever, further that the fifty-one (51) shipments referred to had a "dollars and cents value" of $2,218.25 and that the total amount of sales during that period by the defendant was $220,832.12.

The defendant also denies that any of the plaintiffs, except Paul Spier, was ever, while employed by the defendant, engaged in any way in interstate commerce or in the production of any goods for commerce and denies, as to Paul Spier, that he was engaged in interstate commerce or the production of goods for commerce for any substantial part of his time during his employment.

Upon this state of the pleadings the parties, having waived a jury by stipulation filed, took their testimony, and tried the cause before the court.

At the outset it was admitted by each of the plaintiffs in his testimony that the list of shipments filed as Exhibit "A" to the answer was a correct list of such shipments.

The plaintiffs attempted to prove by their own testimony that each of them performed duties in connection with interstate transactions of the defendant during the time of his employment and how much overtime each was entitled to receive compensation for.

Plaintiff Spier testified that his duties with reference to shipments by the defendant (both interstate and intrastate) were to stick an addressed label on the package and "to write out a bill of lading" all of which occupied the witness in each instance "possibly ten or fifteen minutes". Spier also testified that during the period of his employment he "averaged" working fifty-three (53) hours per week, which he says is an "estimate" and he...