Walsh v. Nursing Home Care Mgmt.

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SECRETARY OF LABOR MARTIN J. WALSH United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. NURSING HOME CARE MANAGEMENT INC., et al. Defendants.

Civil Action No. 21-cv-02583

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania

June 29, 2023

MEMORANDUM

CHAD F. KENNEY, JUDGE

Defendants Prestige Home Care Agency (“Prestige”) and Alexander Dorfman (“Dorfman”), (together referred to as “Defendants”) filed a Motion to Alter or Amend Judgment (ECF No. 128) subsequent to the Court granting Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment in full (ECF No 124). Plaintiff filed an Opposition to Defendants' Motion to Alter or Amend Judgment (ECF No. 132) to which Defendants replied (ECF No. 135). For the reasons set forth below Defendants' Motion to Alter or Amend Judgment is denied.

I. LEGAL STANDARD

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), a party may move to alter or amend a judgment no later than 28 days after the entry of the judgment. “A judgment may be altered under Rule 59(e) if the party seeking reconsideration shows . . . (1) an intervening change in the controlling law; (2) the availability of new evidence that was not available when the court granted the motion . . .; or (3) the need to correct a clear error of law or fact or to prevent manifest injustice.” Adkins v. Sogliuzzo, 820 Fed.Appx. 146, 149 (3d Cir. 2020) (internal quotations omitted). Rule 59(e) “may not be used to relitigate old matters, or to raise arguments or present evidence that could have been raised prior to the entry of judgment.” Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471, 486 n.5 (2008) (internal quotations omitted). Defendants have failed to make the requisite showing under Rule 59(e) as to any of the six aspects of the Court's May 12, 2023 decision and order which they currently raise.

II. DISCUSSION

The Court assumes familiarity with the underlying facts of this case concerning the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and the Court's thorough analysis of the law in its summary judgment opinion. Therefore, the Court in this memorandum opinion addresses only the specific arguments made by Defendants on the instant motion, many of which the Court has already addressed numerous times throughout the litigation.

A. Travel Time

First, Defendants argue that the Court erred in determining that the travel time at issue is compensable, reasoning that there is no record evidence or testimony showing that such travel is “indispensable” to Defendants' employees. ECF No. 128 at 2.

Defendants' argument fails. As an initial matter, Defendants incorrectly state in their opening brief that “Defendants do not concede, nor is there evidence to support, that Prestige home health aide's [sic] must travel to multiple work sites in a day.” Id. at 5. However, as the Court noted in its summary judgment opinion, the parties stipulated that “[s]ome of these home health aide employees travel to more than one client's home between 12:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on the same day” and that “[s]ome of these employees travel from Prestige's office to a client's home at any time between 12:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on the same day.” ECF No. 123 at 2 (citing ECF No. 86-3, Concise Statement of Stipulated Material Facts (“CSSMF”) ¶¶ 26-27). Defendants in their reply brief seem to backtrack, writing that “[t]hough it may be ‘undisputed that Defendants' home health aides who traveled between worksites performed work at each location during the same workday,' Defendants dispute whether such travel was required by, or primarily benefitted Defendants.” ECF No. 135 at 5 (citing ECF No. 132 at 6). Defendants appear to continue to rely on the inaccurate premise that employees had large gaps of time between clients-which this Court has already rejected. See ECF No. 123 at 15.

As to the employees' travel time being integral to the employees' principal activities, Defendants suggest that the Court did not consider Defendants' briefing and further claim that they cited to “countless examples of binding authority” on this matter. ECF No. 128 at 3 n.2. But in fact, Defendants in their summary judgment papers did not analogize the facts at hand to the facts of any Third Circuit case. Nor did Defendants cite any Supreme Court case with analogous facts wherein the Supreme Court found travel time compensable. Defendants now, in their reply brief to the instant motion, for the first time cite a Third Circuit opinion in arguing that the travel time at issue is not compensable. See ECF No. 135 at 3. However, that Third Circuit case, Smith v. Allegheny Technologies, is inapposite. In Smith, the appellant employees were members of a temporary workforce contracted to operate a facility whose unionized steel workers were locked out. Smith v. Allegheny Techs., Inc., 754 Fed.Appx. 136, 138 (3d Cir. 2018). The appellant employees alleged that their employer violated the FLSA by failing to compensate them for their commute time, including the time it took to cross the picket line to enter the work facility. Id. The Third Circuit found that the travel time at issue was not “integral and indispensable” as the commute time was “at least two steps removed” from the employees' task of making steel. Id. at 40. This Court has already addressed a similar analysis undertaken by the Supreme Court in IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), wherein the Supreme Court found that the time employees spent waiting to put on or take off their protective gear was not compensable under the FLSA because the time was “two steps removed from the productive activity” of working on the assembly line. See ECF No. 123 at 15 (citing Alvarez, 546 U.S. at 37). This Court further noted in its summary judgment opinion that the Supreme Court in Alvarez found that “the time that the employees spent walking between the changing area and assembly line area was compensable, as the walking occurred after the workday began and before it ended,” and that the travel time at issue in the instant case occurs after a workday has begun. ECF No. 123 at 15. As such, this Court concluded that “[t]he travel at issue is not ‘two steps removed' from the productive activity of working with Prestige's clients in their homes.” Id.

Defendants in the instant motion further claim that the Court misapplied case law, including United Transportation Union Local 1745 v. City of Albuquerque, 178 F.3d 1109 (10th Cir. 1999), and rely on the opinion of the dissenting judge in that case who found that travel time was not compensable. ECF No. 128 at 3 n.2. Defendants also argue that the Court misapplied the Federal Circuit case Bridges v. United States, 54 F.4th 703 (Fed. Cir. 2022). Id. The Court, in its summary judgment opinion, has already discussed how Defendants' reliance on Bridges is misplaced, as driving was not an essential part of the work performed by employee correctional officers. ECF No. 123 at 14. The Court has further discussed at length how the travel time at issue is an “integral and indispensable” part of the principal activities of Prestige's employees, noting that the travel of Prestige's employees is analogous to the compensable travel of the employees in Albuquerque. Id. at 8-15. In Albuquerque, the Tenth Circuit held that the time spent by bus drivers shuttling to and from relief points during the workday, at the beginning and end of their split shift periods, was part of the drivers' principal activity, while the time the bus drivers spent shuttling to and from their first and last bus runs of the day was not compensable. Id. at 13.

As such, Defendants have failed to show that the Court made a clear error of law or facts on the issue of travel time.

B. Recordkeeping

Second, Defendants argue that the Court committed clear error in finding that Prestige committed a recordkeeping violation. ECF No. 128 at 5. Defendants continue to assert that the travel time at issue is not compensable and, therefore, Defendants were not required to keep track of their employees' travel time. Id. at 6.

Defendants' argument fails because, as discussed, travel time is compensable. Section 11(c) of the FLSA requires an employer to “make, keep, and preserve such records of the persons employed by him and of the wages, hours, and other conditions and practices of employment maintained by him, and shall preserve such records for such periods of time.” 29 U.S.C. § 211(c). These records must include the hours worked each day, and the total hours worked each week. 29 C.F.R. § 516.2. Defendants now argue that Prestige maintained “detailed records” (ECF No. 128 at 7) even though Defendant Dorfman admitted that Prestige did not keep records of the time employees spent traveling between Prestige's clients on the same day, or between Prestige's office and Prestige's clients on the same day (ECF No. 86-3, CSSMF ¶¶ 29, 31).

Defendants misleadingly claim in their instant motion that, according to ECF No. 123, Ex. B ¶ 40 (a screenshot of the Department of Labor's website), it is Plaintiff's position that an estimated portion of travel between shifts is acceptable where an employee is completely relieved of duty for long enough to use the time effectively for her own purposes. ECF No. 128 at 6. However, the paragraph Defendants cite to does not support that proposition; the paragraph instead states that if an employee does not travel directly between two worksites, then only the time necessary to make the trip between the two worksites must be paid. Plaintiff has held the position that an estimation of compensable travel time by Plaintiff is appropriate given Plaintiff's reduced burden of proving damages in light of Defendants' failure to maintain adequate employer records. See ECF No. 132 at 11 n.5. Because Defendants did not keep records of compensable work time, Defendants thereby...