A federal judge presiding in Midland recently ruled in favor of a large class of oilfield workers represented by Borsellino, P.C. seeking unpaid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.\u00a0 In the fifty-eight page ruling, Judge Ezra held:<\/p>\n
The case, styled\u00a0Morgan, Et Al v. Rig Power, Et Al<\/i>, Civil Action No. 7:15-cv-00073-DAE, pending in federal court in Midland, was originally filed in May of 2015 by five current and former field technicians of Rig Power.\u00a0 The workers alleged that they worked more than forty hours per week without being paid overtime as required under FLSA.\u00a0 Rig Power paid them a fixed amount for each day an employee worked more than eight hours, regardless of how many additional hours the employee worked on those days or in a given week.\u00a0 In August of 2015, the workers filed a motion to conditionally certify the collective class, which the Court granted.\u00a0 Eventually, thirty-seven workers joined the class, bringing the total number of workers represented by Borsellino, P.C. in the case to forty-two.<\/p>\n
Both sides filed summary judgment motions.\u00a0 On September 1, 2017, Judge Ezra issued an opinion ruling on the parties\u2019 respective\u00a0motions. \u00a0 Both parties asked the Court to rule as a matter of law on the issue of whether Michael Mayer, the President of Rig Power, was an \u201cemployer\u201d of the workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and thus was jointly and severally liable for the FLSA violations of Rig Power.\u00a0 The Court, finding that three of the four elements of the economic reality test had been met with respect to\u00a0Mayer, concluded that Mayer was an employer of the workers as a matter of law, and thus is individually liable for the FLSA violations of Rig Power.\u00a0 The Court also granted summary judgment in favor of M3P, an affiliate company of Rig Power, finding insufficient evidence that M3P exercised enough control over the workers to constitute an “employer” of the workers as that term is used by the FLSA.<\/p>\n
The Court next addressed the issue of whether the workers were exempt from overtime pay under the Motor Carrier Act exemption. \u00a0 The Court, relying on the plain language of the Technical Corrections Act of 2008, found that the workers were \u201ccovered employees\u201d under the statute and thus were not subject to the Motor Carrier Act exemption and therefore were entitled to overtime pay, denying the Defendants\u2019 summary judgment motion on the Motor Carrier Act exemption and granting the workers\u2019 summary judgment motion on this issue.<\/p>\n
Lastly, the Court addressed the summary judgment motions filed by the Defendants with respect to the issues of good faith and willfulness.\u00a0 The Defendants claimed that because the Department of Labor had previously conducted an audit of Rig Power\u2019s Wysox, Pennsylvania office and found the workers to be exempt under the Motor Carrier Act exemption, they did not violate the FLSA willfully, and their actions were done in good faith.\u00a0 However, the Court held that fact issues precluded entry of summary judgment on these issues, finding that the workers had presented evidence that on at least two occasions Rig Power\u2019s HR director raised concerns regarding the workers\u2019 compensation with Rig Power\u2019s President and that he conducted no follow-up, internal investigation or external consultation to ensure that Rig Power was complying with the FLSA.\u00a0 As such, the Court denied the Defendants\u2019 summary judgment motion on these issues.<\/p>\n
The case will now be set for trial on the issue of damages.\u00a0 A copy of the Court\u2019s summary judgment order can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n About the author<\/b>: Josh Borsellino is a Texas attorney based in Fort Worth.\u00a0 He represents workers, primarily those in the oil and gas sector, on claims for unpaid overtime.\u00a0 Over the past three years, Josh has filed more than thirty lawsuits, representing workers in every federal district in Texas, and has also represented workers outside of Texas.\u00a0 For a free evaluation of an unpaid overtime matter, call Josh at 817.908.9861 or complete this online contact form<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge presiding in Midland recently ruled in favor of a large class of oilfield workers represented by Borsellino, P.C. seeking unpaid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.\u00a0 In the fifty-eight page ruling, Judge Ezra held: that the Motor Carrier Act exemption did not apply to the workers, and thus they are entitled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3886,3895,3896,3897],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}