Ellis v. J.R.'s Country Stores, No. 13-1346 (10th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseIn 2012, plaintiff-appellant Sandra Ellis filed a lawsuit against her former employer, defendant-appellee J.R.'s Country Stores, Inc., bringing one claim under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Ellis began working as the manager of a J.R.'s store in Colorado in 2007. The Company classified her as an exempt, salaried employee and paid her $600 on a weekly basis (an amount that increased to $625 in February 2011), as well as a monthly bonus commensurate with her store's performance. While Ellis was employed in this capacity, she generally worked fifty-hour (and sometimes closer to sixty-hour) weeks, which was consistent with the terms of the Pay Plan. On April 3, 2012, Ellis received a paycheck in the amount of $593.80, instead of the $625 she customarily earned in a pay period. The Company had deducted $31.20 from that paycheck because for the work week of March 16 to March 22, 2012, Ellis reported having worked only 40.91 hours of the requisite fifty. This was the only instance during Ellis's tenure with the Company that she received less than her predetermined pay. Ellis resigned a few days later, and soon after that, she sent the Company a letter "claim[ing] that she [was] owed $42,187.50 in unpaid overtime wages." Ellis argued that she had "lost her exempt status under the [FLSA] . . . when J.R.'s made a one-time deduction from [her] pay for not working fifty hours during a workweek," which, in turn, entitled her to three years' worth of retroactive overtime pay. The district court awarded summary judgment to the Company and denied Ellis's motion for class certification as moot. Ellis timely appealed from the district court's judgment. Finding no reversible error in the district court's decision, the Tenth Circuit affirmed.
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.