Wage and Hour Defense Blog

One of the top stories featured on Employment Law This Week: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reaffirms an employer’s time-rounding practice. A call-center employee in California recently brought a class action lawsuit against his employer for time-rounding practices. The employee claims that the policy caused him to be underpaid by a total of $15 over 13 months. Relying on a California Court of Appeals precedent, the Ninth Circuit found that the company’s facially neutral rounding policy—one that rounds time both up and down—is legal under California ...

On May 2, 2016, the Ninth Circuit issued a published opinion in Corbin v. Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership. The Corbin Court best summarized the action in its opening sentence: “This case turns on $15.02 and one minute.” The “$15.02” represented the wages the plaintiff claimed he lost over a period of time as a result of the company’s neutral time-rounding policy. And the “one minute” represented the amount of off-the-clock time that the plaintiff worked, which the Court held was de minimis and, therefore, not compensable.

Federal and ...

By Evan J. Spelfogel

In recent years employees have asserted claims for time allegedly worked away from their normal worksites, on their Blackberries, iPhones or personal home computers.  Until now, employers have been faced with the nearly impossible task of proving that their employees did not perform the alleged work.  The US Department of Labor and plaintiffs’ attorneys have taken advantage of the well-established obligation of employers to make and maintain accurate records of the hours worked by their non-exempt employees, and to pay for all work “suffered or ...