Ash v. Anderson Merch., LLC, No. 14-3258 (8th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseAsh and Jewsome filed suit under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. 201, on behalf of themselves and similarly-situated persons, alleging that their employer failed to pay required overtime compensation. The district court dismissed without a hearing for failure to allege that defendants were their employer for purposes of the FLSA, and failure to allege a substantive FLSA cause of action. The district court denied plaintiffs’ motion to vacate and request to file an amended complaint. The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The complaint alleged only that: “During all relevant times, [defendants] were part of an integrated enterprise and, as such, were plaintiffs’ employer. During all relevant times, and upon information and belief, all of these defendants shared interrelated operations, centralized control of labor relations, common management and common ownership and/or financial control.” The allegation is simply a restatement of the legal test used to determine whether certain entities constitute a joint employer for the purpose of civil rights litigation and does not include any facts describing the “economic reality” of their employment, such as their alleged employers’ right to control the nature and quality of their work.
Court Description: Kelly, Author, with Murphy and Colloton, Circuit Judges] Civil Case - Fair Labor Standards Act. District court dismissed this FLSA complaint for failure to state a claim. The complaint summarily asserted that defendants were part of an integrated enterprise and were their employers, exercising a common management and common ownership, without regard to the economic realities of their employment. Plaintiffs did not allege any facts sufficient to allow an inference that the defendants were their employer and thus the district court did not err in dismissing the complaint. The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying their motion to amend based on an inexcusable delay in requesting leave.
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