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Federal Court Dismisses Wage & Hour Class Action, Citing Company’s Compliance and Training
June 18, 2010
Posted by Shanti Atkins
In early May of 2010, a Federal Court in Western New York dismissed a potential wage & hour class action lawsuit brought against Black & Decker. In Kuebel v. Black & Decker (U.S.) Inc., an hourly employee claimed that he was discouraged from reporting all of his hours and overtime. The court found the employee's testimony unreliable, and completely dismissed the employee's individual claims, and all the potential class's claims as well.
Significantly, in dismissing these claims, the court favorably cited Black & Decker's extensive wage law compliance and training efforts. For example, the Court noted that the company had written wage and hour and work time reporting policies (including wage-related polices in its Code of Ethics), an anti-retaliation policy for wage-related complaints, and an anonymous hotline for reporting wage violations. The court specifically mentioned that Black & Decker trained non-exempt employees and their managers regarding wage & hour compliance, and regularly retrained them.
Kuebel clearly demonstrates that strong wage and hour compliance efforts, including policies, internal reporting procedures, and wage & hour training for both managers and employees can pay huge dividends. First, these efforts can avoid problems to begin with, by instructing all employees about the employer's key pay policies and practices, such as the proper way to record work time. Moreover, if an employer nevertheless is confronted with a potential wage and hour class action challenging its payroll practices, the Kuebel decision provides strong support that an employer's compliance and training efforts should help convince a court to dismiss that legal challenge.
You can read the full Kuebel decision at: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7726078475602406572&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr.
