Britt et al. v. Scripps [$2,900,000.00]

Facts and Allegations:

Scripps is the biggest hospital in San Diego County. It is one of the largest employers in San Diego. It employs approximately 18,000 at any given time.

The court certified plaintiffs’ time rounding claims. Plaintiffs’ alleged the rounding was unlawful because it was rounding to the nearest quarter hour and not compensating hourly employees for all of their work. For instance, if you clocked in at 7:57 am and clock out at 5:06 pm, the Defendant’s time recording system would actually round the start time up to 8:00 am and would round the end time down to 5:00 pm, thus, the hourly employee would lose 9 minutes of time worked. Roe Hospital claimed their rounding system was lawful because some hourly employees gained time; thus, it all evened out.

Plaintiff also claimed that Scripps was not factoring the benefits it provided to its hourly employees as part of the regular rate of pay, and, thus was calculating overtime incorrectly. Scripps filed a motion for summary adjudication calling these benefits “perks” that were not required to be factored into the regular rate of pay for purposes of calculating overtime. The court denied Scripps’  motion, and agreed with Plaintiffs that these benefits could not be disposed of as a matter of law.

Then, Plaintiffs certified a theory that Scripps’ meal period policy did not allow its hourly employees a meal period within five hours.

Shortly thereafter, the case settled.