Seattle partner Derek Bishop successfully defended against wage and hour claims brought by 43 former and current employees following nine days of testimony in Federal Bankruptcy Court in Yakima, Washington. The case was originally filed as a class action in the state court, but was eventually moved into bankruptcy court. Once there, the current and former employees, represented by counsel for the United Farm Workers, filed claims alleging that they were owed additional wages by the firm's client, a family run dairy operation.
In their claims, the workers alleged they were owed additional wages for time spent traveling from the parking lot to their work stations, and for not receiving rest breaks or meal periods. Some of the workers were paid on a shift rate, and they claimed they were entitled to additional pay for hours worked. Claimants were seeking approximately $800,000 in damages.
At the hearing, Bishop convinced 20 of the claimants to dismiss their claims prior to them providing testimony to the court. As to the remaining 23 claimants, in an 80-page order, the court agreed with Bishop that the time spent traveling from the parking lot to the work space was not compensable work time and that the shift workers were paid for all of the time worked. On the rest break claims, the court went through the testimony of each claimant individually and found that each claimant’s testimony was unreliable and dismissed each of those claims outright.
For the meal breaks, after reviewing the testimony of each claimant individually, the court again found the testimony to be unreliable and rejected all of the claimants’ testimony. The court instead relied upon the dairy’s time records to determine if any meal breaks were missed. Ultimately, the court awarded just under $25,000 in damages to the claimants, far less than the $800,000 claimants demanded. In another blow to the claimants, the court significantly limited and reduced claimants’ attorney fees owed to $25,000, because the court was not going to award the attorneys all of their fees for pursuing mostly meritless claims.
This significant win was covered by the Pacific Northwest's Capital Press on December 21, 2021. To read the full article, please click here.