Seyfarth Synopsis: A recent court decision credited Nike's time and motion study showing employees spent mere seconds of time in off-the-clock bag checks, finding the checks to be too trivial and difficult to capture to require payment. In contrast, the class failed to present actual evidence showing any amount of compensable time spent by the class off-the-clock while managers inspected their bags or checked their jackets.
In Rodriguez v. Nike Retail Services, Inc., Nike defeated a class action alleging that hourly retail workers were owed money for the time they spent waiting for security inspections after they had clocked out and were exiting the store.
Nike hired an expert to conduct a study of exit inspections, which showed that the average inspection takes no more than 18.5 seconds and that 60.5 percent of all exits required zero wait time. Rather than submit contradictory evidence in response to Nike's 700 hours of video, which the court found to be representative of the class period, Plaintiff Isaac Rodriguez relied on an expert declaration attempting to poke holes in Nike's study.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman called Plaintiff's strategy "misguided," rejecting "Rodriguez's attempt to equate this situation to a battle of experts sufficient to deny summary judgment." "[P]oint[ing] out flaws in the other side's evidence," was not the same as "offering any conflicting evidence for the jury to consider at trial on the relevant claim or defense."
Evaluating Nike's evidence under the de minimis defense, and recognizing that daily periods of up to 10 minutes have been found to be de minimis, Judge Freeman ruled that the workers hadn't shown that their off-the-clock exit time was close to meeting that threshold. Although Rodriguez pointed to testimony from three store managers who estimated that some employees may have had a few inspections with higher wait-times, the judge found that wait-times of two or five minutes were too trivial, irregular and administratively difficult to capture.
Judge Freeman also agreed that repositioning time clocks to the front of the store so that employees could clock out after the check was not required. Taking a practical view, the court noted that "brief exit inspections are a modern business reality that most retailers, like Nike, use for the legitimate reason of reducing theft."
Although the California Supreme Court is considering the de minimis doctrine in Troester v. Starbucks Corp., Judge Freeman declined Rodriguez's invitation to "predict how the California Supreme Court will rule." Instead, she noted that the court was compelled to apply existing law to the case, finding the Ninth Circuit and other courts had applied the de minimis doctrine to California claims.
For the moment, this ruling is good news for employers who can put away their stop watches when small increments of off-the-clock time are irregular and difficult to record. But keep your eye on the ball because the California Supreme Court will be making the final call on the de minimis doctrine and whether or how it applies in the state.
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