On March 22, 2016 the United States Supreme Court made an extremely important decision involving a very large United States based food industry corporation. In Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo the Court held that when certifying a class or collective action, differences between members of the class do not prohibit the formation of a class in a situation where statistical techniques, which assume the class members are all identical, will be used to determine the company’s liability and damages awarded.
Employees at Tyson claimed they didn’t receive any kind of overtime compensation for time they spent enrobing and shedding protective gear before entering and after exiting the slaughterhouse. Depending on the employee’s position, each job required different gear according to what was happening on that given day. Some employees were compensated, but others weren’t. Tyson didn’t keep any kind of specific time records for the act of enrobing or shedding the protective gear.
Class members said the protective gear was integral and indispensable to the work and thus should be something that was paid for. Therefore the employees filed a lawsuit claiming they were owed overtime pay.
Tyson, a multi-million dollar company, said that since the employees were wearing different kinds of gear that required difference amounts of time to put on and take off, the employees’ claims weren’t sufficiently similar to constitute a class. Tyson Foods also argued that there has to be a way to identify uninjured class members and ensure they don’t contribute to the amount of damages awarded and do not receive damages.
In Iowa, the District Court agreed with the class of employees whose question was whether time spent putting on and taking off protective gear was compensable and could be resolved by a class action lawsuit.
Unfortunately, Tyson Foods did not keep any kind of adequate time records and statistical data was used to estimate the time putting on and the time taking off the protective gear. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court confirmed this decision stating:
“Whether a representative sample may be used to establish classwide liability will depend on the purpose for which the sample is being introduced and on the underlying cause of action. In FLSA actions, inferring the hours an employee has worked from a study such as [the one used in this case] has been permitted by the Court so long as the study is otherwise admissible…The fairness and utility of statistical methods in contexts other than those presented here will depend on facts and circumstances particular to those cases.”
Tyson claimed that the use of statistical data led to incorrect financial judgments in the class action lawsuit and is unfair.
When it came to whether or not there would be some kind of mechanism to root out employees who didn’t technically suffer any kind of injury, the Court said since the damages haven’t been awarded and since it hasn’t been determined how the damages will be disbursed, this isn’t a fair question for this case at this point in time.
Tyson Foods will have to wait for the case to return to District Court for any further questions to be addressed.
