Seventh Circuit Clarifies Plaintiffs’ Evidentiary Burden in FLSA Cases

Quick Hits

• The FLSA requires employers to pay nonexempt employees—including those paid on a salary basis—overtime for all hours worked beyond forty in any workweek.
• The district court, applying a “just and reasonable inference” standard, found that an employee who had not tracked her time worked over forty hours and relied on her testimony of the duties performed to support her overtime claims had not presented evidence sufficient to overcome an order of summary judgment for the employer.
• On appeal, the Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the employer, stating that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 governs summary judgment, and the more lenient “just and reasonable inference” standard for calculating damages applies after a plaintiff meets the initial burden of establishing liability.

Background

Tara Osborn was a longtime employee of JAB Management Services, which contracts with other entities to provide prison healthcare. At the time of her termination of employment, Osborn was a technical support specialist providing on-call support regarding inmate medical records. The technical support specialist is a fully remote, salaried nonexempt position. Osborn was free to design her own schedule, although typical business hours ran from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Osborn admitted she did not track any time she worked over forty hours. JAB Management did not track her overtime either. Still, Osborn claimed to have worked an average of ten hours per day and fifteen hours of overtime per week. When asked to describe her work, Osborn stated she “had to work outside of normal business hours to take support calls, respond to emails, drive to client sites, and ‘patch servers,’” including irregular weekend work.

The Seventh Circuit noted that toward the end of her employment with JAB Management, Osborn’s supervisors stated she “failed to explain what she was working on throughout the day, yet she complained about having too much to do.” As a result, some of her tasks were reassigned to her coworkers, while Osborn’s supervisors coached her to correct her performance. When Osborn’s performance did not improve, JAB Management terminated her employment.

Osborn then sued JAB Management, alleging the company had failed to pay her overtime compensation as required by the FLSA. JAB Management moved for summary judgment. The district court, applying a “just and reasonable inference” standard, granted JAB Management’s motion, holding that Osborn had failed to “prove by a just and reasonable inference the amount and extent of work she performed.” Osborn appealed to the Seventh Circuit.

The Seventh Circuit’s Analysis

The Seventh Circuit first clarified that the burden of proof at summary judgment (governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56) differs from the “just and reasonable difference” standard, stating, “The just and reasonable inference standard ‘applies to damages questions only after an employee has met the initial burden to establish liability.’”

To establish liability, an employee who claims that he or she was not compensated for overtime in violation of the FLSA must present evidence of the hours worked, which can be established through the employee’s testimony. To survive summary judgment, the employee’s evidence must place the employee’s version of events beyond the level of mere speculation or conjecture. As the Seventh Circuit noted, “While employees need not describe their schedules ‘with perfect accuracy,’ they should be able to offer ‘testimony coherently describ[ing]’ their typical workweeks.”

When pressed for details on what she did for ten hours per day, Osborn responded vaguely that she worked on “[c]ustomer issues, the database, the reports, it is very labor intensive.” While Osborn claimed to have coworkers who could testify regarding her workload, she failed to offer their sworn testimony. The court found her claim of consistently working fifteen hours of overtime per week to be inconsistent with her reports of call volume declining over time and significant changes to her duties.

Citing Sixth and Eighth Circuit decisions in support, the Seventh Circuit held, “[T]he evidence [Osborn] has produced fails to provide us with even a general sense of her typical workweek.”

“If this claim survived summary judgment,” the court continued, “then any FLSA claim in which the employee vaguely describes her schedule as having exceeded forty hours per week would reach a jury.”

Key Takeaways

JAB Management clarifies the evidentiary burden employees must meet at the summary judgment stage of proceedings when alleging failures to pay overtime compensation under the FLSA. Like other circuits, the Seventh Circuit has held that conclusory estimates about an employee’s average workweek, without more, do not permit a trier of fact to conclude an employee worked overtime. Under the court’s holding, nonexempt employees claiming unpaid overtime have a burden of producing at least some admissible evidence of their specific overtime hours worked and the duties they allegedly performed during those hours.

Ogletree Deakins’ Wage and Hour Practice Group will continue to monitor developments and will provide updates on the State Developments and Wage and Hour blogs as additional information becomes available.

Follow and Subscribe
LinkedIn | Instagram | Webinars | Podcasts