labor lawAdivision of labor law center

Employers may need to implement new payroll procedures due to a recent 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on overtime.

In a Nebraska lawsuit against Famous Dave’s restaurant chain, the appeal court upheld the lower court ruling that the employer should have known that employees were working a more than one Famous Dave’s location.

The restaurant chain is based in Minnesota and has both franchise and company-owened locations throughout the Midwest.

The court found that most Omaha restaurants had policies prohibiting employees from working at more than one location. When an employee had permission to work at several locations, the employer had a system in place to combine the employees hours to calculate overtime.

However, Famous Dave’s  had no policy prohibiting employees from working at more than one location. A number of employees did work at two or more locations. Their hours were not combined to calculate overtime, (more…)