Trial Begins in California Misclassification Lawsuit

A California misclassification lawsuit has been filed by two former employees from property service company Field Asset Services (FAS), for allegedly misclassfying them as contractors and denying them full complete minimum wage.

This California misclassification lawsuit obtained class action status, alleging the company threatened to cut work assignments if employees did not work seven days a week. Former FAS contractors Julia Magdaleno and Kenneth Freeborn had filed the California misclassification lawsuit after the company allegedly stopped assigning work orders to them in response to their taking time off.

Magdaleno and Freeborn had been hired by FAS to clean foreclosed properties, and soon began allegedly receiving threats of withholding work orders if they tried to deny any jobs. This essentially forced Magdaleno and Freeborn to work seven days a week, they claim, without any overtime benefits.

“We were told by almost everyone that we were talking to that we were not allowed to cherry-pick work orders. Even if we didn’t make any money on jobs — they would say it would even out,” Magdaleno said in testimony.

Plaintiffs Allege Misclassification, Underpayment, Failure to Pay Expenses

According to the California misclassification lawsuit, Freeborn had been work for FAS from 2008 until August 2010 and had regularly had to work seven days a week. Freeborn had reportedly been forced to work seven days a week to keep up with the work, and could not take any time off under the fear of FAS withholding work assignments.

Along with fellow FAS contractor Bowerman, they testified the company failed to compensate them thousands of dollars worth of work related expenses including: mops, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, power tools, drills, and other equipment needed to complete the job.

According to the California misclassification lawsuit, Magdaleno and Bowerman estimated that their total FAS expenses were about $591,485, an amount that had accumulated between January 2009 to May 2012.

Freeman and Magdaleno testimonies’ were presented on the second day of a jury trial, under U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick.

The judge had granted the employees partial summary judgment in March 2017, finding the employment status of Freeman and Magdaleno as standard minimum wage employees and not contractors. Judge Orrick also found FAS liable for all missing overtime and business expenses, but told the jury to decide the damage amount the employees were entitled to.

According to the California misclassification lawsuit, employees are assigned work through the FAS online portal and had between two to three days to complete their tasks.

The work orders ranged in difficulty from changing locks on foreclosed homes, to cleaning, to doing yard work at these properties. The most time consuming jobs, however, involve clearing evicted homes and disposing of any items the former homeowners may have left. These jobs often required contractors to load their personal vehicles or find trucks to use, drive for hours to dump the items, and pay the dump to accept the items.

If the contractors did not finish these assignments by the deadlines, FAS would reassign the work assignments to other contractors and would not pay the initial contractor for any work they did for the job. FAS allegedly failed to compensate employees for these expenses as well, and allegedly classified them as contractors to avoid paying minimum wage.

This California Misclassification Lawsuit is Bowerman et al. v. Field Asset Services Inc., Case No. 3:13-cv-00057, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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