The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled recently that a plaintiff claiming that his employer failed to pay him overtime in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) can get his case in front of a jury with no more evidence than his own word that he worked overtime and was not paid for it.
From a practical perspective, the appeals court’s ruling in Moran v. Al Basit LLC, No. 14-2335 (6th Cir. June 1, 2015), will make it more difficult for an employer to get an FLSA overtime case dismissed at the summary judgment stage and avoid the time, expense, and uncertainty of a jury trial.
The decision, however, conflicts with rulings from a number of other circuit courts of appeals that have upheld summary judgment in favor of the employer when a plaintiff’s FLSA claim was not supported by any evidence other than the employee’s own say-so, particularly when the employer’s records said otherwise.
The Sixth Circuit’s decision in Moran is available online at http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/15a0105p-06.pdf.