Stebbins v. Petroleum Equip. Servs.

• Docket Number: Civil Action 21-15117 (SRC)
• Decision Date: 09 March 2022
• Parties: MICHAEL STEBBINS, individually and on behalf of those similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. PETROLEUM EQUIPMENT SERVICES d/b/a WILDCO PES, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey

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MICHAEL STEBBINS, individually and on behalf of those similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. PETROLEUM EQUIPMENT SERVICES d/b/a WILDCO PES, Defendant.

Civil Action No. 21-15117 (SRC)

United States District Court, D. New Jersey

March 9, 2022

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

OPINION & ORDER

STANLEY R. CHESLER, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This matter comes before the Court upon Defendant Petroleum Equipment Services' (“Defendant” or “PES”) motion to dismiss Plaintiff Michael Stebbins's (“Plaintiff”) Complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. (ECF No. 14). Plaintiff has opposed Defendant's motion and filed a cross-motion for leave to file an Amended Complaint. (ECF No. 16). For the reasons that follow, the Court will grant Defendant's motion to dismiss in part and deny it in part and grant Plaintiff's motion to amend his Complaint.

I. Background^[1]

This case arises out of a dispute regarding Defendant's compensation of its customer service technicians. Defendant provides technical services for petroleum service centers.

(Compl. ¶ 45). Plaintiff worked for Defendant from around June 2020 to October 2020 as a Field Service Technician. (Compl. ¶ 46). Plaintiff's job duties required him to travel to various customer sites. (Compl ¶ 62). In order to transport Plaintiff's tools and materials, Defendant provided him with a specialized truck that he kept at his home. (Compl. ¶ 63).

Defendant paid Plaintiff on an hourly basis as follows. Plaintiff reported to Defendant all hours between the time he left his home for his first customer service assignment of the day and the time he arrived back home after his last customer service assignment of the day. (Compl. ¶ 67). Defendant then deducted forty-five minutes from the number of hours reported by Plaintiff to account for the time Plaintiff spent commuting to his first assignment and home from his last assignment. (Compl. ¶ 68). Plaintiff was paid according to the number of hours remaining after the forty-five-minute deduction. (Compl. ¶ 68).

Plaintiff alleges Defendant's policy of deducting time spent commuting to and from work violated federal and state wage and hour laws in two ways.^[2] First, Plaintiff alleges the commute time deduction resulted in a failure to pay him one and half times his regular rate for any hours worked over forty hours in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law (“NJWHL”). (Compl. ¶¶ 72-86). Second, Plaintiff alleges the deduction resulted in a failure to pay him for all hours worked in violation of the New Jersey Wage Payment Law (“NJWPL”) and New Jersey state common law.^[3] (Compl. ¶¶ 87-99).

Plaintiff originally filed his Complaint in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire. (ECF No. 1). Defendant filed a motion to transfer the case to this Court, which the District of New Hampshire granted. (ECF Nos. 8 & 9). After the transfer, Defendant filed the currently pending motion to dismiss all of Plaintiff's claims. (ECF No. 14). Plaintiff opposed the motion and filed his own cross-motion for leave to amend the Complaint. (ECF No. 16). Defendant opposes Plaintiff's motion to amend. (Def. Reply Br. 2-8).

II.Discussion

A. Legal Standard

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a) requires courts to grant leave to amend “freely. . . when justice so requires.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). “Leave to amend under Rule 15 should be denied only in certain circumstances, such as ‘undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice, or clear futility of the amendment.'” Brown v. Camden City Sch. Dist., No. 19-cv-00114, 2020 WL 6055070, at *2 (D.N.J. Oct. 13, 2020) (quoting Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962)). Defendant argues Plaintiff's proposed amendment is futile. (Def. Reply Br. 2-8). Futility means that the proposed amendment “would fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.” In re Burlington Coat Factory Sec. Litig., 114 F.3d 1410, 1434 (3d Cir. 1997). In determining whether an amendment is futile, the court applies “the same standard of legal sufficiency as applies under Rule 12(b)(6).” Id.

Pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint must “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). A complaint will meet this plausibility standard “when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). While the complaint need not demonstrate that a defendant is probably liable for the wrongdoing to meet the requisite pleading standard, allegations that give rise to the mere possibility of unlawful conduct are insufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss. Id.; Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557. Further, a complaint is not required to include highly “detailed factual allegations, ” but must include more than mere “labels and conclusions.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555. Finally, “the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. The Court addresses Plaintiff's federal and state law claims under the plausibility standard below.

B. The FLSA Claim

Plaintiff alleges Defendant violated the FLSA by failing to pay him overtime compensation. (Compl. ¶¶ 72-86); 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). The original Complaint and the Proposed Amended Complaint (“PAC”) contain two distinct categories of allegedly compensable work for which Plaintiff was not paid. First, Plaintiff alleges his commute to and from customer work sites using a truck provided by Defendant and carrying tools necessary for his job is a compensable activity under the FLSA (the “commute time allegations”). (Compl. ¶¶ 62-70). Second, in addition to the commute time allegations, the PAC alleges that Plaintiff completed a number of tasks for which he was not compensated after returning home from customer sites, including filling out and submitting paperwork, checking the service board to ensure all customer service requests were completed, and answering emails (the “postliminary allegations”). (PAC ¶¶ 63-64). Defendant argues that neither category constitutes “compensable work” under the FLSA. (Def. Br. at 5-10); (Def. Reply Br. at 2-7).

The basic principle underlying the FLSA is that “[e]mployees are entitled to compensation only for ‘work.'” Reich v. N.Y.C. Transit Auth., 45 F.3d 646, 651 (2d Cir. 1995). However, the FLSA does not define “work.” IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21, 25 (2005). Initially, the Supreme Court adopted a broad definition of the term. Id.; see also De Asencio v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 500 F.3d 361, 367 (3d Cir. 2007). For example, in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946), the Court held that the FLSA required an employer to compensate factory employees for time they spent walking from time clocks at the entrance of the factory to their workstations. Id. at 691-92. A year after Anderson, in 1947, Congress narrowed the FLSA via the Portal-to-Portal Act. Carter v. Panama Canal Co., 463 F.2d 1289, 1293 (D.C. Cir. 1972). Under the Portal-to-Portal Act, employers need not compensate employees for

(1) walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities which such employee is employed to perform, and

(2) activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said principal activity or activities,

which occur either prior to the time on any particular workday at which such employee commences, or subsequent to the time on any particular workday at which he ceases, such principal activity or activities.

29 U.S.C. § 254(a).

The FLSA regulations define “principal activities” as “those which the employee is employed to perform.” 29 C.F.R. § 790.8(a); see also Gorman v. Consol. Edison Corp., 488 F.3d 586, 590 (2d Cir. 2007). The Supreme Court has also interpreted the term “to embrace all activities which are an integral and indispensable part of the [employee's] principal activities.” Integrity Staffing Sols., Inc. v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27, 33 (2014) (internal quotation omitted). If a work activity is classified as a “principal activity” it is compensable no matter if it is performed outside of an employee's typical work shift. Colella v. City of N.Y., 986 F.Supp.2d 320, 338 (S.D.N.Y. 2013). As a general matter, regular commute time is not considered a principal activity or integral and indispensable to a principal activity under the Portal-to-Portal Act. 29 C.F.R. § 785.35; see also Lassen v. Hoyt Livery, Inc., 120 F.Supp.3d. 165, 174 (D. Conn. 2015) (explaining that the Portal-to-Portal Act “established th[e] principle” that ordinary commute time is not compensable).

In 1996, Congress amended the Portal-to-Portal Act by passing the Employment Commute Flexibility Act (“ECFA”). The ECFA specifically addresses the compensability of commute time for employees who use employer-owned vehicles. Chambers v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 428 Fed.Appx. 400, 409 (5th Cir. 2011). It states:

the use of an employer's vehicle for travel by an employee and activities performed by an employee which are incidental to the use of such vehicle for commuting shall not be considered part of the employee's principal activities if the use of such vehicle for travel is within the normal commuting area for the employer's business or establishment and the use of the employer's vehicle is subject to an agreement on the part of the employer and the employee or representative of such employee.

29 U.S.C. § 254(a).

In all after the passage of the Portal-to-Portal Act, an...