John Stewart
Thu, 09/29/2022
On September 2, 2022, a magistrate judge in the Middle District of Florida issued a report and recommendation to deny summary judgment to the defendant employer in an overtime lawsuit brought by “Medical Reps” working for Progressive Casualty Insurance Company (“Progressive”). In addition, the magistrate recommended rejecting Progressive’s motion to break up the lawsuit, which would mean the plaintiffs’ collective action can continue to trial.
The plaintiffs work as “Medical Rep Associates” or “Medical Rep Intermediates” and they seek to recover unpaid overtime compensation. Progressive failed to pay them their overtime as a result of Progressive wrongly classifying them exempt from overtime per the administrative exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). The plaintiffs investigate and process “no fault” personal injury protection claims by the insured. The magistrate found that Progressive’s Medical Rep spend the majority of their work time “occupied by customer service and clerical duties” rather than exempt work requiring independent judgment and discretion on matters of significance to their employer’s business.
In addition to rejecting the employer’s motion for summary judgment, the magistrate also recommended denying the motion for decertification, allowing the case to continue with all plaintiff employees joined in a collective action rather than individually. In doing so, the magistrate recited an insightful quotation from another case, where the judge noted that “it is ‘disingenuous for [the defendant employer], on one hand, to collectively and generally decide that all store managers are exempt from overtime compensation without any individualized inquiry, while on the other hand, claiming that plaintiffs cannot proceed collectively to challenge the exemption.’” Rosario v. Progressive Cas. Ins., No. 6:20-cv-352-WWB-EJK, 2022 BL 311227, at *12 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 2, 2022).
The Progressive employees’ victory in Florida comes on the heels of another win for employees misclassified as exempt from overtime, in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. There, the court ruled that property damage investigators in Georgia were non-exempt “production workers” and entitled to overtime pay. Click here to read our update on the aforementioned case.
For more information on how employers improperly classify workers as exempt from the FLSA in order to avoid paying overtime, visit https://www.mselaborlaw.com/practice-areas/misclassified-ot-ineligible. If you believe you have been misclassified and are entitled to overtime pay, contact us at info@mselaborlaw.com.
