Adams v. ActionLink, LLC, No. 13-3265 (8th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseThe Department of Labor (DOL) investigated a complaint that ActionLink, a marketing company, had misclassified some of its employees as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and failed to pay overtime compensation. During the investigation, ActionLink agreed to reclassify the employees as non-exempt and to pay them their missing back wages. It sent the employees checks with a disclaimer stating that the checks represented "full payment … wages earned, including minimum wage and overtime, up to the date of the check." Several employees cashed the checks; others did not. Some then sued ActionLink, claiming that they were entitled to additional pay under the FLSA. The district court granted the employees summary judgment and declared them non-exempt. ActionLink then moved for summary judgment against the employees who had cashed the back-wages checks, claiming that they had waived their rights for additional remuneration under 29 U.S.C. 216(b). The district court agreed and dismissed the cases. The Eighth Circuit affirmed in part, agreeing that the employees are non-exempt, but concluded the release language on the checks was insufficient to notify employees of the consequences of cashing the checks. The employees therefore did not waive their FLSA claims by cashing the checks.
Court Description: Civil case - Fair Labor Standards Act. The district court did not err in determining that certain of defendant's employees were non-exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act as they performed non-exempt promotional work for the company to stimulate sales that would be made by someone else and were not, themselves, outside salesman for FLSA purposes; nor were they administrative employees as they did not meet the tests for administrative employees established in 29 C.F.R. Sec. 541.200; the district court erred in determining that one group of the employee plaintiffs had waived their right to pursue additional claims against defendant by cashing proposed settlement checks; the court joins other courts which have held that the plain language of 29 U.S.C. Sec. 216(c) requires an agreement by the employee to accept a certain amount of back wages and requires the employer to pay those wages; this involves more than simply tendering a check and having the employee cash it, as an agreement must exist independently of the payment; here, the language on the checks was insufficient as a matter of law to constitute proper notice to the employees and did not serve as a release of their rights.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.