A federal appeals court has withdrawn a jury verdict in favor of a field technician in his fight with his employer, ATM maker NCR, over allegedly unpaid overtime, saying the tech’s claims are thwarted by his failure to properly record his time worked off the clock.
On Oct. 5, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federal jury verdict for plaintiff Michael Meadows against Atlanta, Georgia-based NCR Corporation.
Meadows, who worked for NCR from 2008-2019 sued NCR in 2016, serving as the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit on behalf of at least 40 other field techs who serviced NCR’s array of ATMs and point of sale systems used in stores, restaurants and other settings.
In that lawsuit, Meadows claimed NCR was routinely shorting field techs wages by allegedly refusing to pay them overtime for hours they worked in place of breaks or before and after their shifts ended. Meadows’ lawsuit asserted this violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
The class action was cut short, however, when a federal judge in 2020 backed NCR’s assertions that Meadows had not sufficiently demonstrated that he and the other potential class members did not have similar enough history with the company to allow them to proceed collectively.
However, Meadows’ individual case went to trial in 2021, and a jury sided with him, ordering NCR to pay him for about 1,500 hours in unpaid overtime.
Meadows’ lawyers estimated that should be worth about $225,000 in back OT pay and interest, plus attorney fees.
After a judge denied NCR a new trial, the company appealed to the Seventh Circuit court.
On appeal, the circuit judges sided with NCR, saying the lower court had erred in allowing Meadows to claim he was owed payment for hours he had worked, but had not recorded.
The decision was authored by Seventh Circuit Judge Thomas L. Kirsch. Circuit judges Diane S. Sykes and Kenneth F. Ripple concurred.
In the decision, the judges agreed that NCR could be obligated under the FLSA law to pay Meadows and potentially other field techs for the time they spent off the clock answering emails, phone calls and performing other tasks that were considered “incidental” parts of their jobs, even if that time was off the clock and even though the company’s policies directed employees to not perform work off the clock.
According to court documents, NCR still agreed to pay workers for unauthorized overtime, so long as the hours were properly recorded using the company’s system.
In this case, Meadows claimed he performed many “incidental” work activities before and after his work shifts and during meal breaks, for which he was not paid. He said these included responding to emails and phone calls, stocking his work van with required materials for his jobs each day, and mapping out his work travels.
However, in this instance, the judges said the law did not compel NCR to pay Meadows for those hours worked, because he did not explicitly record those work hours.
The appellate judges said, under the FLSA, employees can only expect to be paid for “incidental activity … if two conditions are met: the employer elected to pay for such activities by contract, custom, or practice and the employee engaging in such activities complied with all the requirements imposed … by that contract, custom, or practice.”
In this case, they said, Meadows fell short of the second condition.
“In sum, we hold that an employer’s knowledge of an employee’s incidental activity is immaterial when it has no obligation to pay for that activity in the first instance because the employer’s custom or practice of payment only demands compensating employees who have satisfied the custom or practice’s requirements—which are inextricable from the custom or practice itself,” Kirsch wrote. “The district court erred in concluding to the contrary…”
The appeals panel vacated the jury’s verdict and sent the case back to district court for further proceedings on whether Meadows should get a new trial.
Meadows has been represented by attorneys Ryan F. Stephan, James B. Zouras, Haley R. Jenkins and Anna Ceragioli, of the firm of Stephan Zouras, of Chicago.
NCR was represented by attorneys Paul W. Hughes and Charles Seidell, of the firm of McDermott Will & Emery, of Washington, D.C.