Miami Employment Lawyer Blog

As a Miami employment attorney, I am often asked questions about the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") as it may apply to managers. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta recently affirmed a jury verdict of over $35 million against Family Dollars Stores, Inc. in favor of a group of store managers that sued for overtime compensation under the FLSA. In that case, the store managers filed a lawsuit for unpaid overtime compensation under the FLSA, which ultimately triggered a collective action that included 1,424 store managers. Family Dollar Stores claimed that the store managers were not entitled to overtime pay because they were exempt executives. The jury initially deadlocked, but after a second trial, the jury returned a verdict finding that the store managers were not exempt from the FLSA and that Family Dollar Stores willfully denied them overtime pay.

At trial, Family Dollar Stores argued that the store managers should be exempt because their primary duty was managerial in nature, principally because the store managers were "in charge" of the stores. However, the Court rejected those arguments because the evidence presented at trial demonstrated that store managers actually spent very little time exercising discretion and spent 80 to 90 percent of their time performing manual tasks, such as running the cash registers, unloading trucks, stocking shelves, and cleaning the floors and bathrooms.

In its 47-page opinion, the Court specifically noted that company executives testified that they never conducted a study to analyze the duties of the store managers and that all store managers were considered exempt regardless of the store size, sales volume, or number of employees. One company executive testified that the company categorically classified all store managers as exempt executives regardless of how they spent their workdays. This was fatal to the company's arguments.