United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
HONORABLE RANER C. COLLINS, SENIOR UNITED STATES DISTRICT
JUDGE
Pending
before the Court is Plaintiff Carolyn Bledsoe's Motion
for Leave to File Amended Complaint (Class Action and
Collective Action). (Doc. 28.) Plaintiff seeks amendment to
correct her initial allegation that Defendant classified its
home health Clinicians as overtime exempt to state that
Defendant classified its Clinicians as
“non-exempt.” (Doc. 28-1 at 4.)
Defendant
filed a response (Doc. 31), arguing the proposed Amended
Complaint (Doc. 28-1) is futile because it would be
immediately subject to dismissal for failure to state a claim
on which relief can be granted under the Ninth Circuit
pleading standards for Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29
U.S.C. § 201 et seq. (“FLSA”)
claims. (Doc. 31 at 5.) Plaintiff filed a Reply. (Doc. 32.)
The Court will grant Plaintiff's Motion for Leave to File
Amended Complaint.
I.
Pleading Standards for FLSA Claims
A
plaintiff is required to give a short and plain statement of
the grounds for the Court's jurisdiction, a short and
plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is
entitled to relief, and a demand for relief sought.
Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(1-3). However, the Supreme Court later
expanded on those requirements. Bell Atlantic Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (holding that a claim
must also be more than “a formulaic recitation of the
elements of a cause of action”); see also Ashcroft
v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (holding that a claim
must be supported by more than “mere conclusory
statements.”) The Ninth Circuit created another
condition, specifically for FLSA claims, that the petitioner
describe a given workweek in which the FLSA was violated.
Landers v. Quality Commc'ns, Inc., 771 F.3d 638,
644-45 (9th Cir. 2015). Under Landers, a plaintiff
may still “establish a plausible claim by estimating
the length of her average workweek during the applicable
period and the average rate at which she was paid . . . or
any other facts that will permit the court to find
plausibility, ” but some description of a workweek must
be given. Id. at 645.
II.
Factual and Procedural History
Petitioner
states that she wants to amend her Complaint “to allege
that although Plaintiff and other similarly situated home
health Clinicians were considered ‘non-exempt' and
eligible for overtime pay, Defendant nevertheless failed to
pay them 1 ½ times their regular rate of pay for
recorded hours worked in excess of forty per workweek . . .
in violation of the FLSA.” (Doc. 28 at 3.)
Defendant
contends the Court should deny the amendment because the
pleaded facts are insufficient to state a claim under the
heightened pleading standards of Landers.
Landers at 644; (Doc. 31 at 6.) Defendant alleges
that the amendment is futile under the Landers
standard and should be dismissed pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P.
12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim on which relief may be
granted. Moreover, Defendant suggests that Plaintiff's
amendment is without evidentiary support. (Doc. 31 at 2.)
Defendant alleges Plaintiff incorrectly assumed that
Defendant classified Plaintiff Bledsoe and other similarly
situated employees as exempt when they are “non-exempt,
” and that Plaintiff's payroll history and pay
stubs “should have been available to Plaintiff's
counsel before ever filing the original Complaint.”
(Doc. 31 at 2-4.)
Plaintiff
addresses Defendant's futility argument by including
additional facts within her Reply in Support of Her Motion
for Leave to File Amended Complaint. (Doc. 32.) Plaintiff
includes a supplementary paragraph which would fulfill the
requirements of the Landers FLSA pleading standard.
(Doc. 32 at 4.) Plaintiff states that she was not previously
able to provide an example of a workweek in which the FLSA
was violated because Defendant did not submit information in
a timely manner as required by Court order. (Doc. 4); (Doc.
32 at 6-7.) Plaintiff further claims that she did not have
access to her payroll history and pay stubs due to the
Defendant's restriction of her access to Defendant's
online portal. (Doc. 32. at 6.)
Under
the General Order for Notice to the Parties of Mandatory
Initial Discovery Pilot (MIDP) Project in the District of
Arizona, both parties to this litigation were required by the
Court “to provide mandatory initial discovery
responses.” (Doc. 4 at 4.) Each party was ordered to
“[l]ist the documents, electronically stored
information (‘ESI'), tangible things, land, or
other property known by [it] to exist, whether or not in
[its] possession, custody or control, that [it] believe[d]
may [have been] relevant to any party's claims or
defenses.” Id. at 7.
Plaintiff
outlines the timeline of discovery thus far, stating that
Defendant did not disclose certain evidence regarding
Plaintiff's compensation until March 25, 2019, five
months after Defendant's Answer was filed on October 22,
2018. (Doc. 13.) Plaintiff also states she did not have
access to her payroll history and pay stubs through
Defendant's online portal because Plaintiff's access
to that information was restricted by Defendant when her
employment ended in July 2018. (Doc. 32 at 6.) Plaintiff
maintains she therefore could not have amended her complaint
to cure this deficiency within 21 days of serving her
original complaint, allowable as a matter of course under
Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(1)(A). With the information disclosed in
March, Plaintiff asserts she can now provide an example of a
given work week in which she alleges she was not adequately
compensated for overtime. (Doc. 32 at 4.)
III.
Discussion
The
Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court's dismissal of
petitioner's claims in Landers. Landers
at 646. However, the court wrote that it would have remanded
the case back to the lower court and given the plaintiff
leave to amend his complaint but that he expressly elected to
“stand on his claims as alleged.” Id. In
contrast, Plaintiff Bledsoe is making a concerted effort to
cure the deficiencies of her complaint. Plaintiff included in
her Reply (Doc. 32) additional facts “demonstrating
there was at least one workweek in which Plaintiff worked in
excess of forty hours and was not paid proper overtime wages,
as required under Landers.” (Doc. 32 at 4.)
Plaintiff claims these facts were gleaned from
Defendant's recent discovery response. Id.
Plaintiff
alleges the defects in her complaint are due to
Defendant's control of relevant material. As the court in
Landers pointed out, “most (if not all) of the
detailed information concerning a plaintiff-employee's
compensation and schedule is in the control of the
defendants.” Landers at 645. The employment
documents upon which Plaintiff has based her Amended
Complaint would be considered relevant to Plaintiff's
claims, and Defendant should have produced those documents
within 30 days of filing its responsive pleading on October
22, 2018, as is compulsory ...