Richmond Virginia Personal Injury Lawyer articles in category: Workplace Injuries

A recent Department of Labor investigation against a Municipal Sheriff's Department illustrates how requiring employees to perform work-related activities prior to "clocking in" violates the unpaid overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Sheriff's Department required its deputies to attend meetings at the start and end of the workday, but did not include this time in...

A significant trend in wage and hour law is the number of Computer and IT workers, particularly those in the service industry, who are filing lawsuits seeking to recover unpaid overtime. Many employers mistakenly regard overtime pay as a benefit available only to "blue collar" workers, and misclassify high-tech employees as exempt from the overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards...

Loan Officers for American Equity Mortgage recently filed a national class action lawsuit alleging that their employer misclassified them as exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, and seeking recovery of unpaid overtime compensation. This lawsuit is part of a growing trend of lawsuits filed by "white collar" workers in the financial, pharmaceutical, computer, IT, service and other industries...

A Texas woman has filed a class action against Lowes Home Center alleging Lowes violated the overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The woman, who was a warehouse employee at a regional distribution center, claims that Lowes owes her unpaid overtime, and did not credit her for time that she performed required work for Lowes before and after her scheduled shift, including...

McLane Co., Inc., a wholesale distributor of food and grocery products, has agreed to pay $1,559,316 in unpaid overtime wages to 570 current and former employees after the Department of Labor found that the company had misclassified the employees as exempt from the overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The company had erroneously classified the employees, who were "retail...

A number of pharmaceutical companies, including Roache Laboratories, Inc., Abbot Laboratories, Inc., Eli Lilly & Co., Pfizer, Inc., Merck & Co. Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, are facing wage-and-hour suits filed on behalf of their sales representatives. Our firm recently filed such a case against Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. claiming the company failed to pay hundreds of sales representatives...

We are pleased to report that, today, our law firm received a favorable Fourth Circuit Court ruling for a client establishing a claim for a company's retaliation against former employees who claim unpaid overtime compensation. The controlling law which requires the payment of overtime for all hours worked over 40 per week, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), contains separate retaliation...

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provides that the vast majority of employees are entitled to overtime pay at "time and a half" for every hour worked beyond 40 hours in a week. The FSLA is complex, and many employers violate both the FSLA and state laws governing overtime pay. The penalties for violating the overtime pay laws are recovery of two to three years of unpaid wages, liquidated...

The largest wage-and-hour class action ever certified in Washington state is set for trial in the spring of 2009. The statewide class action is against retail giant Wal-Mart, and it includes 75,000 current and former employees. Any worker employed at Wal-Mart or Sam's Club between September 10, 1997 and the present is automatically a member of the class. The complaint alleges Wal-Mart...

A class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court in Iowa by two assistant managers accusing Casey's General Stores, Inc. of refusing to pay them overtime that they earned. The assistant managers worked at a store in Iowa and claimed that they were required to work several hours per week off the clock. This accumulated to hundreds of hours over a three-year period. The...

Class action lawsuits filed on behalf of thousands of pharmaceutical sales representatives involve allegations of unpaid overtime against eight major drug companies. The essence of the claims involves demands for overtime compensation for the hours that the drug representatives spend attempting to push the particular pharmaceutical drugs in the doctors' offices. There are more than a dozen...

The U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to consider an appeal brought by an IBM employee claiming that he was forced to leave the company in retaliation for his complaint about unpaid overtime. In the case, employee Michael Saville had worked for the company for 32 years before he accepted early retirement in October 1998. Saville filed suit afterwards claiming that he was forced to leave...

The vast majority of employees are entitled to overtime pay at "time and a half" for every hour worked above forty hours in a week. Yet , every day employers violate the federal and state laws enacted to compensate workers for hard work and the inconvenience of longer hours. The state and federal laws (the Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA) governing overtime pay can be complex and often...