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  • Case Opinion

Anderson v. Weinert Enters.

United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

September 21, 2020, Argued; January 28, 2021, Decided

No. 20-1030

Opinion

 [*775]  Scudder, Circuit Judge. Ample ink has been spilled discussing class action litigation and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Rare are the cases analyzing the Rule's numerosity requirement. This is one of those cases.

Richard Anderson worked in northeast Wisconsin for a local roofing company called Weinert Enterprises. Following a dispute with the company over how Weinert calculated overtime wages, Anderson brought suit in federal court in Wisconsin. After his collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act failed to attract enough employee support, Anderson withdrew the federal claim. But he still sought to pursue Wisconsin state law claims as a class action. The district court determined that Anderson's proposed class would include no more than 37 members and, after finding that joinder of those 37 [**2]  members was not impracticable, denied the class certification motion for failing to meet Rule 23's numerosity requirement. We affirm.

Richard Anderson worked as one of Weinert's handful of seasonal employees. Although the company maintained a physical shop, employees worked mostly at job sites in the Green Bay area. Because employees sometimes lived closer to a job site than the shop, Weinert offered its employees the option to drive on their own to the project location or to carpool from the shop using a company truck. If employees chose the company carpool, Weinert paid travel time at time-and-a-half the minimum wage rate. Because Weinert already paid travel time this way, it did not count travel time hours toward an employee's 40-hour work week when calculating other overtime hours. For example, if an employee accumulated six hours of travel time and worked 40 hours at the job site, the employee would not receive any overtime pay for the job site work. This matters to Anderson because Weinert paid more than minimum wage for job site work, meaning overtime wages for job site work would be higher than what employees received for travel time.

Anderson sued Weinert alleging that this policy [**3]  violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and Wisconsin labor laws.

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986 F.3d 773 *; 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 2418 **; 2021 WL 282551

RICHARD J. ANDERSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WEINERT ENTERPRISES, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

Prior History:  [**1] Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. No. 1:18-cv-00901 — William C. Griesbach, Judge.

Anderson v. Weinert Enters., 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 144056, 2019 WL 3986345 (E.D. Wis., Aug. 23, 2019)

CORE TERMS

employees, district court, numerosity, class member, joinder, impracticable, hired, season, class certification, class action, job site, proposed class, travel

Civil Procedure, Class Actions, Class Members, Named Members, Prerequisites for Class Action, Adequacy of Representation, Typicality, Numerosity, Special Proceedings, Certification of Classes, Evidence, Burdens of Proof, Allocation, Preponderance of Evidence