Press & News

John Collins Quoted in Houston Chronicle
02/10/2006

John Collins was quoted in an article (“Lawyers rush to get in on wage-and-hour action”) published in the February 8, 2006 issue of the Houston Chronicle based on an analysis by our Houston office which found that 168 wage complaints were filed in federal court in Houston under the Fair Labor Standards Act in 2005, five times the number of complaints filed in 2001.

“The cases are very attractive to the plaintiffs’ bar,”  John states.  “When they dig down deep enough, companies are often doing something wrong.”  The reason, John explains, is not that companies are run by evil people but that wage-and-hour regulations are fairly dense, making violations easy to find.  Winning a wage-and-hour case is much easier than winning other kinds of employment cases, since it is not necessary to prove illegal motivation and the liability is clear:  if the wages are due, the employees get paid.  Payouts are greater because judges often rule that other employees can join the case.  Back pay is usually doubled, and attorneys fees are often tacked on separately so that employees don’t have to foot the bills.

So what can a company do to head off the problem?  It’s a tough question, says John.  If a company conducts an audit and finds a group of employees were misclassified, the problem cannot usually be remedied simply by paying them correctly going forward.  Chances are, they’ll figure out that if they’re owed overtime now, they should have received it in the past.  And it only takes one employee to call a lawyer, who would undoubtedly mention the two to three years of back pay they’d be eligible for as well as an equal amount in damages.