Case Notes

In Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 2016 U.S. LEXIS 2134 (S. Ct. Mar. 22, 2016), the plaintiffs, employees who worked in certain departments at the defendant's pork processing plant, brought a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), and putative class action under an Iowa wage statute and Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3), in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. The plaintiffs sought overtime pay for all employees' hours exceeding 40 per week, because the defendant had not credited the employees for time spent donning and doffing protective gear.

The district court certified the action as both a class and collective action. Because the defendant had failed to keep records of donning and doffing time as required by the FLSA, the plaintiffs offered expert testimony at trial using a study that estimated the average donning and doffing time per employee in each department based on representative sampling, applied the relevant average to each employee's individual time records, and estimated that the class was collectively owed $6.7 million. The jury ultimately awarded $2.9 million, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed.