Defendant's Attorney: Stephen H. Lee, Kelly Rae Ferrell, Mary Anna Hill
Description: Houston, Texas employment law lawyer represented Plaintiffs who sued Defendant on Fair Labor Standards Act violation theory.
This is an overtime case. Three installers of window blinds sued FS Blinds, L.L.C., the company for which they worked. The district court granted summary judgment to FS Blinds, determining that Plaintiffs had not
met their prima facie burden to show they worked overtime.
FS Blinds, a seller and installer of window blinds in Texas, engaged
Plaintiffs Jose Flores, Jean Romero-Rodriguez, and Brandon Villarreal to
install blinds. Flores worked for FS Blinds from mid-April 2018 until early
October 2019. Romero-Rodriguez did so from early March until late October
2019, and Villareal worked from early August 2018 until early April 2020,
though he performed no work for FS Blinds for several weeks during that
period.
Plaintiffs measured windows for blinds, delivered and installed blinds,
and repaired damaged blinds, mostly in newly constructed homes. While the
company’s office and warehouse are in Pearland, Plaintiffs traveled to job
sites across the greater Houston area. Because FS Blinds treated Plaintiffs as
independent contractors, it did not maintain records of the hours Plaintiffs
spent performing work for the company. Instead, Plaintiffs received flat fees
for each window measurement, blinds installation, or blinds repair completed
without regard to how long the job took or the travel time from one job site
to the next. FS Blinds owned the warehouse and maintained the inventory
of blinds, but Plaintiffs traveled to job sites in their own vehicles and used
their own tools to complete the jobs.
Plaintiffs did not have set work schedules. Instead, each afternoon,
FS Blinds sent them lists of jobs for the next day. The next morning,
Plaintiffs picked up the day’s blinds from FS Blinds’s warehouse. Flores and
Romero-Rodriguez had early pickup times, arriving at the warehouse
between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. Villarreal had a later time, between 7:00 and 8:00
a.m. After pickup, Plaintiffs left the warehouse and traveled to job sites to
complete their assignments. Each Plaintiff was largely responsible for
managing his own schedule throughout the day. So long as the day’s job list
did not specify otherwise, Plaintiffs could complete the jobs in any order they
chose. And if they failed to complete all the jobs on the day’s list, they could
roll jobs over to the next day.
Plaintiffs’ daily quitting times varied. Flores usually finished between
8:30 and 10:00 p.m. but sometimes worked as late as midnight. RomeroRodriguez usually finished between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. Villarreal, between
7:00 and 10:00 p.m.
While their usual weekly work schedules were Monday through
Friday, Plaintiffs sometimes worked Saturdays. Other times, they worked
fewer than five full days, at times working as little as one day a week. And as
noted above, Villareal did no work at all for FS Blinds during several weeks
over the course of his year-and-a-half stint with the company. Despite the
variations in their schedules, Plaintiffs assert they each worked an average of
“around 70 hours per week.”
In October 2019, Plaintiffs sued FS Blinds for failing to pay overtime
compensation, as required under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). See
29 U.S.C. § 207. FS Blinds countered that “Plaintiffs were classified as
independent contractors” and therefore were ineligible for overtime
compensation. See id.
After discovery, both sides moved for summary judgment. The
district court denied Plaintiffs’ motions, but it granted summary judgment to
FS Blinds. The court determined that Plaintiffs had failed to meet their
prima facie burden to show they worked overtime. Based on that conclusion,
the court dismissed Plaintiffs’ claims. The court denied summary judgment
as to whether Plaintiffs were independent contractors, stating only that “a
genuine question of material fact exists regarding Plaintiffs’ employee
status.” After the district court entered its final judgment, Plaintiffs timely
appealed
Outcome: Reversed
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
Comments: