Under the Fair Labor Standards Act and , employers are required to pay employees at time and half their normal rate for all hours worked over 40 per week. But making a wage and hour or overtime claim is not that simple and requires the knowledge of knowledgeable and qualified wage and hour lawyers.
For example, a recent decision in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to grant an employer’s motion to dismiss an overtime claim under the Fair Labor Standards Act. In Dejesus v. HF Management Systems Services, LLC, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of plaintiff Ramona Dejesus’ FLSA and New York Labor Law overtime claims, finding that Dejesus’ complaint lacked the factual specificity necessary to plead an overtime violation.
Specifically, Dejesus alleged in her complaint that she worked more than forty hours per week during “some or all weeks” of her employment, but that she was not properly compensated for her alleged overtime hours. After filing the complaint, HF Management Systems Services filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that Dejesus’ overtime allegation failed to plead sufficient specificity to support her overtime claim. The trial court agreed, finding that Dejesus failed to state a claim because she did not to set forth “any approximation of the number of unpaid overtime hours worked . . . or any approximation of the amount of wages due.”
The Second Circuit affirmed the trial court’s decision, holding that “in order to state a plausible FLSA overtime claim, a plaintiff must sufficiently allege 40 hours of work in a given workweek as well as some uncompensated time in excess of the 40 hours.” In essence, because Dejesus failed to estimate the number of hours she worked per week, or allege the number of weeks that she was not paid overtime compensation, the Second Circuit held that her overtime claim lacked the factual specificity necessary to state a claim of an FLSA violation.
If you believe that your employer is not paying you all of your wages for all of your lawfully earned overtime compensation at a rate of one and half times your normal wages as requires under the Fair Labor Standards Act, contact the attorneys at Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm today for a free and confidential initial consultation. Or maybe you are being misclassified as an independent contractor. The wage and hour lawyers at Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm will provide you with the best options for your overtime pay dispute situation. If you even think that you may be entitled to overtime pay that you are not being paid, call 866-797-6040.
Disclaimer:
The materials available at this wage and hour law website are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Your best option is to contact an Ohio overtime attorney to obtain advice with respect to FLSA questions or any particular employment law issue. Use and access to this employment law website or any of the links contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship. The legal opinions expressed at or through this site are the opinions of the individual lawyer and may not reflect the opinions of Spitz, The Employee’s Law Firm or any individual attorney.