Wyndham Employee Class Action Lawsuit Decided Favorably for Plaintiffs

A Tennessee federal judge has resolved a Wyndham employee class action lawsuit in favor of the plaintiffs.

U.S. District Judge C. Clifford Shirley Jr. released a lengthy written decision on this case in which the plaintiffs alleged violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The initiating plaintiffs in the Wyndham employee class action lawsuit were Jesse P. and Michael P. They started the legal action process in October 2013. Judge Shirley recommended class certification six months later.

By August 2014, the U.S. District Court certified the Wyndham employee class action lawsuit on a conditional basis. The class consisted of past and present sales representatives for Tennessee-based Wyndham resorts for the three-year period up to the filing date.

The past and present sales representatives named as part of the certified Class included in-house, front-line, and a category known as “discovery.”

The key allegation of the initiating plaintiffs in the Wyndham employee class action lawsuit was that many sales representatives worked without pay for overtime hours and breaks that were not in fact taken.

As part of that allegation, the narrative of the Wyndham employee class action lawsuit indicates that sales managers were pressured to edit timecards to reflect a 40-hour week. The sales managers also were required to supposedly pressure sales representatives to show breaks on their time record, even though the nature of the job didn’t lend itself to taking breaks.

Although the Wyndham defendants did request for the action to be dropped back in June of this past year through a move for class decertification, the court declined and moved forward in October 2017 with trial before Judge Shirley.

As part of the proceedings, the plaintiffs brought both live and written testimony on their behalf. Twenty-six people appeared in front of the judge for the complainants and nine statements written by a combination of plaintiffs and witnesses were introduced.

In this Wyndham employee class action lawsuit, the judge heard the live stories of nine witnesses for the defense. He was also given 32 written statements to review prior to the completion of the bench trial at the end of October.

Judge Shirley reviewed all the notes from live and written testimony and presented his decision recently in favor of the plaintiffs.

In hi opinion, the federal magistrate judge determined the Wyndham vacation companies based in the state of Tennessee were clearly in violation of the FLSA.

As an illustrative example, according to Law360, he referenced the testimony of David N., a sales rep and manager at a Wyndham resort in the Smoky Mountains region. David N. testified that management asked him to clock in and clock out during the day without any respect to whether or not he was actually taking a break.

According to the testimony cited in the judge’s decision, the sales representatives never took breaks by the nature of their jobs. They were required to show breaks that never happened by clocking out within six hours.

Both the plaintiffs and the defense must file status reports to the court before the Feb. 2, 2018 deadline, so that the court can determine a monetary judgement against the Tennessee Wyndham resorts that will include liquidated damages.

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