Firm Clients Defeat Motion To Dismiss; Prevail On Conditional Certification Motion

Firm clients Yolanda Deleon and Sirena Stell defeated defendant Medicalodges, Inc.’s motion to dismiss and prevailed on their motion to conditionally certify their overtime class. Deleon and Stell are certified nursing assistants who work in one of Medicalodges’s Kansas nursing home facilities. They allege that Medicalodges hired them through an online recruiting App called Shiftkey. Plaintiffs contend that, despite the Shiftkey promise that they will be treated as independent contractors, Medicalodges in fact imposes rigorous rules, conditions and limitations. The result, plaintiffs contend, is that they are, as a matter of law, employees and entitled to employee protections, including overtime for hours worked over 40 per week.

Medicalodges filed a motion to dismiss after the Complaint was filed, arguing that plaintiffs could not recover overtime under the Kansas Wage Payment Act. The Court denied the motion, finding that plaintiffs “seek[s] to recover only gap time [which refers to uncompensated hours under 40 hours a week] … and gap time – as claimed in this case – ‘does not raise overtime or minimum-wage issues.’ “

The Court also granted plaintiffs’ motion, resulting in the conditional certification of plaintiffs’ overtime claims brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Court found that plaintiffs had demonstrated that other CNAs were “similarly situated” to them, and conditionally certified a class of “all Certified Nursing Assistants who worked in Medicalodges facilities through Shiftkey in the last three years.”

The order denying the motion to dismiss is here; the order conditionally certifying plaintiffs’ overtime class is here.

The firm’s cocounsel in this case are Rowdy Meeks of the Rowdy Meeks Legal Group LLC in Prairie Village, Kansas and Ryan Hancock of the Willig, Williams & Davidson law firm, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.