Overtime Exemption Lawsuit Filed by IHOP Employees

Workers at Florida IHOP restaurants are filing a proposed class action overtime exemption lawsuit against their employers stating that some of them were not paid properly for overtime.

Defendants Sunshine Restaurant Partners LLC and Sunshine Restaurant Merger Sub LLC are being accused by a group of employees that they have made a practice of misclassifying assistant managers and managers in training as exempt.

Exempt status means a worker is not subject to overtime or minimum wage laws. Plaintiff Angela Littlejohn filed this overtime exemption lawsuit against the Sunshine Restaurant companies.

Sunshine Restaurants operates more than 150 restaurants in Florida and Georgia. Littlejohn believes that Sunshine Restaurants unlawfully classifies all of its assistant managers and managers in training as exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements. She believes that they should be classified as non-exempt workers.

This overtime exemption complaint states, “SRP’s unlawful conduct has been pursuant to a corporate policy or practice of minimizing labor costs by violating the FLSA wage and hour laws.”

It continued, “SRP knew or recklessly disregarded the fact that underfunding store labor budgets resulted in plaintiffs and other AMs and MITs working more than 40 hours in a workweek without receiving any additional overtime compensation. This allowed SRP to avoid paying additional wages including overtime to the non­exempt, store­level employees.”

Littlejohn was employed as an assistant manager in Fort Myers, Florida at an IHOP pancake restaurant that Sunshine Partners operates. She worked there from November 2013 to August 2014 and was paid as an exempt employee an annual salary of $36,000. This included when she did her initial training to become an assistant manager.

Her overtime exemption complaint said that Sunshine Restaurant Partners required Littlejohn to work between 50 and 55 hours per week as an assistant manager, but they did not pay her premium overtime for any hours she worked over 40 hours per week.

Assistant managers are expected to work at least 72 hours each week during the four week training period and are classified as exempt from overtime.

This, Littlejohn believes, is against the law.

Her overtime exemption complaint claims that “[t]o minimize labor costs, SRP staffs its stores leanly and strictly manages hours worked by non­exempt, hourly employees to avoid paying them overtime. To compensate for this approach, SRP relies heavily on its salaried managers to perform non­exempt duties at its restaurants when there are not enough hourly employees to properly do so.”

This collective action overtime exemption lawsuit affects assistant managers who worked for Sunshine Restaurant Partners on or after March 21, 2014.

The Overtime Exemption Case is Littlejohn et al. v. Sunshine Restaurant Merger Sub LLC et al., Case No. 0:17­cv­60810, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

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