McDonald’s Wage and Hour Class Action Lawsuit Levies $750K in Penalties

The judge overseeing a McDonald’s wage and hour class action lawsuit has limited the company’s damages and penalties to $750,000, upon finding that the alleged violations were not willful.

In the tentative decision, Judge Ann Jones of the Los Angeles County Superior Court noted that “the uncontroverted testimony established that McDonald’s believed that its payroll date overtime practice was fair and legally required.”

McDonald’s alleged violations include infringing upon state overtime law and its mishandling of its employees’ overnight shifts.

According to the McDonald’s wage and hour class action lawsuit, the allegations arose out of McDonald’s practice of starting its daily work schedule at 4 a.m. instead of 12:01 a.m. For workers  scheduled for overnight shifts, the company allotted all the hours from those shifts to the day during which the shift started. As a result of that practice, employees scheduled for an overnight shift followed by a daytime shift ended up working more than eight hours within a single 24-hour period without being paid an overtime rate for the extra hours, the plaintiffs claimed.

Judge Jones found that McDonald’s was in violation of California labor law. She found the company’s method of scheduling overnight shifts workers resulted in thousands of Class Members being shorted on warranted overtime pay.

But the evidence allegedly showed that the violations were not willful, Judge Jones concluded. According to testimony, “McDonald’s believed that its payroll date overtime practice was fair and legally required,” the judge wrote in her decision.

McDonald’s had contended that its computer system and its alleged labor scheduling practices indicate that its locations establish a workday of 4 a.m. to 3:59 a.m., and so, the evidence of this is not consistent or relevant. However, Judge Jones rejected this contention. She advised, rather, that the timekeeping and calculation used in determining worker’s overtime pay is useful.

Earlier this year, Judge Jones rejected evidence that showed how McDonald’s timekeeping system operated on a daily schedule that ran from 4 a.m. to 3:59 a.m. At the time, the judge found that evidence was not relevant to the question of liability. The judge now says that evidence will be useful for calculating how much back overtime pay will be due to Class Members.

The attorney representing the workers said that he was taken by surprise that the court’s ruling had only granted $750,000 and not more. He said, however, that he would continue to fight for additional injunctive relief, since McDonald’s has not changed its practices.

Moreover, he also focused on the fact that the judge found McDonald’s practices and violations of California labor laws were not willful, arguing that willfulness isn’t the standard under California labor law. He believes the relevant question is whether McDonald’s intended to schedule its workers the way it did, not whether the company intended to break the law.

This McDonald’s wage and hour class action lawsuit was initially filed by plaintiff Maria Sanchez in January 2013. It was later joined by plaintiffs David Cruz, Ines Marino and Jonathan Valentin, a year later.

The McDonald’s Wage and Hour Class Action Lawsuit is Case No. BC499888, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles.

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