Bonilla v. Red Bean System, Inc. , 61 F. Supp. 3d 145 ( 2014 )

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
EDWIN BONILLA,
Plaintiff, Civil Action No. 14-342 (BAH)
v. Judge Beryl A. Howell
RED BEAN SYSTEM, INC., et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
The plaintiff, Edwin Bonilla, brings this suit as a proposed collective action under the
Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201, et seq., and the District of Columbia
Minimum Wage Act (“DCMWA”), D.C. Code §§ 32-1001 et seq., alleging that the defendants,
Red Bean System Inc. d/b/a Sala Thai, and Oy Changsirla (collectively, “the defendants”) failed
to pay him and other similarly situated employees the overtime to which they were statutorily
required. See generally Compl., ECF No. 1. Pending before the Court is the defendants’ partial
motion to dismiss the collective action allegations in the plaintiff’s Complaint. See Defs.’ Mot.
Dismiss Under FRCP 12(b)(6) (“Defs.’ Mot.”) at 1–2, ECF No. 6. For the reasons explained
below, the defendants’ motion is denied.
I. BACKGROUND
The plaintiff alleges that he worked approximately sixty hours per week for the
defendants as a “food preparer,” yet he was paid $625 per week as a “salaried employee.”
Compl. ¶¶ 17–21. The plaintiff alleges that he was not compensated at all for his overtime hours
and that the $625 was payment only for the first forty hours he worked each week. See id. ¶ 36.
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The plaintiff brings the suit as a proposed collective action on behalf of all similarly
situated employees. See id. ¶ 39. He describes the similarly situated employees (“the Proposed
Collective”) as follows:
[A]ll current and former kitchen and food preparation employees of Defendants at
all of Defendants’ Sala Thai restaurants in the District of Columbia and Maryland
during the period March 2011 through the present, who were suffered or
permitted to work by Defendants and were subject to Defendants’ policy not to
properly compensate them at the premium rate of pay for hours over forty (40) per
workweek.
Id. ¶ 39. The plaintiff avers that the Proposed Collective “consists of more than twenty
(20) members who have been victims of Defendants’ common policy and practices that have
violated their rights under the FLSA and DCMWA by, inter alia, willfully denying them
overtime wages at the required FLSA and DCMWA rate.” Id. ¶ 40. The plaintiff further states
that the Proposed Collective “would benefit from the issuance of a court-supervised notice of the
present lawsuit and the opportunity [for the similarly situated employees] to join the present
lawsuit.” Id. ¶ 44. The plaintiff seeks all unpaid overtime wages, liquidated damages, and
attorneys’ fees. Id. ¶ 51. The plaintiff has not yet moved for conditional certification of the
Proposed Collective.
The defendants filed an answer to the complaint and moved to dismiss the collective
action allegations on May 21, 2014. See Defs.’ Mot. at 1; Answer to Compl. at 1, ECF No. 5.
The plaintiff filed a timely opposition, see Pl.’s Opp’n Defs.’ Mot. (“Pl.’s Opp’n”) at 1, ECF No.
8, and the defendants filed no reply. The Court scheduled a hearing on the defendants’ motion
for August 6, 2014.
II. LEGAL STANDARD
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require that a complaint contain “a short and plain
statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, in order to give the defendant
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fair notice of what the . . . claim is and the grounds upon which it rests[.]” Bell Atl. Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted); FED. R. CIV. P. 8(a). A
motion under Rule 12(b)(6) does not test a plaintiff’s likelihood of success on the merits; rather,
it tests whether a plaintiff properly has stated a claim. See Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236
(1974) abrogated on other grounds by Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 814 (1982).
Although “detailed factual allegations” are not required to withstand a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a
complaint must offer “more than labels and conclusions” to provide “grounds” for “entitle[ment]
to relief.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (alteration in original). “Nor does a complaint suffice if it
tenders ‘naked assertion[s]’ devoid of ‘further factual enhancement.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556
U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557) (alteration in original). The Supreme
Court has stated that “[t]o survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient
factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Id.(quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570). A claim is facially plausible “when the plaintiff pleads
factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable
for the misconduct alleged.” Id. (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556).
III. DISCUSSION
The FLSA provides that “[a]n action to recover [unpaid overtime] . . . may be maintained
against any employer . . . in any Federal or State court of competent jurisdiction by any one or
more employees for and in behalf of himself or themselves and other employees similarly
situated.” 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). This statutory provision exempts FLSA collective action suits
from the typical requirements of a class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23,
namely, typicality, numerosity, commonality, and adequacy of representation. See Encinas v.
J.J. Drywall Corp., 265 F.R.D. 3, 6 (D.D.C. 2010); Chase v. AIMCO Props., L.P., 374 F. Supp.
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2d 196, 199–200 (D.D.C. 2005) (collecting cases); see also Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc. v. Sperling,
493 U.S. 165, 172 (1989) (noting that a district court’s discretion over controlling procedures in
FLSA collective action case is contained in FED. R. CIV. P. 83, since procedures in such cases are
“not provided for by rule”) (internal quotation mark omitted). Under the FLSA, “a collective
action has only two threshold requirements: the plaintiff must show that [he] is similarly situated
to the other members of the proposed class, and those other members must ‘opt in’ to the
proposed class.” Hunter v. Sprint Corp., 346 F. Supp. 2d 113, 117 (D.D.C. 2004). In FLSA
collective actions “potential class members must affirmatively joint (‘opt in’) the lawsuit.”
Lindsay v. Gov’t Emps. Ins. Co., 448 F.3d 416, 419 (D.C. Cir. 2006).
The defendants assert that the “Plaintiff[] fail[s] to reasonably and fairly articulate and
allege any set of facts as to the essential and defining characteristics of any class of allegedly
‘similarly situated’ employees to whom the policies of Defendant(s) in denying overtime
compensation may apply.” Defs.’ Br. Supp. Mot. Dismiss (“Defs.’ Mem.”) at 1–2, ECF No. 7.
To bolster their argument, the defendants aver that the Proposed Collective could theoretically
encompass “virtually every employee, engaged in both managerial, sales, as well as other jobs”
and that many of those “would clearly be exempt employees, such as professional chefs who are
within the cited group of ‘Kitchen Help[.]’” Id. at 5–6. On its face, the defendants’ argument is
deficient, since the Proposed Collective would appear to exclude all “front-of-house” staff in the
defendants’ restaurants, such as servers and hosts. See Compl. ¶ 39 (limiting Proposed
Collective to “kitchen and food preparation employees”).
Moreover, a court typically considers a plaintiff’s collective action allegations at the time
the plaintiff moves to conditionally certify the collective or to involve the court in notifying
potential collective members. See, e.g., Castillo v. P & R Enters., Inc., 517 F. Supp. 2d 440,
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444–45 (D.D.C. 2007) (noting two-step procedure involving conditional certification of
collective pre-discovery and potential decertification post-discovery). The defendants here rely
on an unpublished, out of circuit magistrate judge’s opinion for their contention that a collective
action can be dismissed on 12(b)(6) grounds. See Defs.’ Mem. at 4 (citing Meggs v. Condotte
Am., Inc., No. 12-20876 CIV, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116326, at *8–9 (S.D. Fla. Aug. 17,
2012)). 1 Not only is that case not binding on this Court, it is also inapposite. In Meggs, the
magistrate judge held that a motion to dismiss filed by the defendants was “premature at this
stage” and found that the allegations in that complaint, namely, the type of worker, the
employment dates, the employment locations, control by the defendants, and the lack of overtime
pay, were sufficient to meet the plaintiff’s burden under 12(b)(6). See id. at *9–10.
Assuming, arguendo, that it is appropriate to dismiss a proposed collective action solely
based on the Complaint, the plaintiff has met his burden here. Indeed, the plaintiff must make
only a “modest factual showing sufficient to demonstrate that they and potential plaintiffs
together were victims of a common policy or plan that violated the law,” Castillo, 517 F. Supp.
2d. at 445 (quoting Chase, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 200) (internal quotation marks omitted), when
seeking conditional certification. Here, on a motion to dismiss, when the Court must consider
only whether the allegation is plausible, accepting the facts in the Complaint as true, the burden
on the plaintiff necessarily is even lower. The plaintiff has met this low burden by identifying
the Proposed Collective as consisting of (1) food prep and kitchen staff, (2) employed in the
District of Columbia and Maryland, (3) between March 2011 and the present, (4) who were
“suffered or permitted to work by Defendants,” and (5) were not paid overtime wages as a result
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The defendants failed to offer a single citation to authority from the D.C. Circuit or the District of the District of
Columbia. See generally Defs.’ Mem. Instead, the defendants rely on Eleventh Circuit precedent—and cases from
district courts bound by the Eleventh Circuit’s rulings—almost exclusively. See generally id.
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of the Defendants’ policy. See Compl. ¶ 39. This is adequate at the motion to dismiss stage to
identify who the similarly situated employees may be and why they are similarly situated.
The Court is not ruling today on conditional certification since there is no motion before
it for such a ruling. The defendants are free to dispute any motion for conditional certification of
the Proposed Collective at the appropriate time, but for the purposes of a motion to dismiss, the
plaintiff has met his burden.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the defendants’ Partial Motion to Dismiss is denied. The
parties shall, by August 17, 2014, comply with the requirements of this Court’s Standing Order ¶
3, ECF No. 3, by filing jointly a Meet and Confer Report pursuant to Local Civil Rule 16.3(b).
An appropriate Order accompanies this Memorandum Opinion.
Digitally signed by Beryl A.
Howell
DN: cn=Beryl A. Howell,
o=District Court for the District of
Date: August 1, 2014 Columbia, ou=District Court
Judge,
email=howell_chambers@dcd.us
courts.gov, c=US
__________________________
Date: 2014.08.01 14:35:11 -04'00'
BERYL A. HOWELL
United States District Judge
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