Weirton Legal Issues Blog

One of the scariest scenes many people have witnessed is seeing a vehicle roll over in a car accident. Such events can almost seem surreal because everyone knows that vehicles are supposed to remain with their tires on the ground, and when one overturns, it is frightening and almost unbelievable.

Of course, the situation is far worse if you are someone inside the vehicle that overturns. Though rollover accidents may not be as common as other, less-severe car crashes, they still take place far too often. Because you undoubtedly do not want to put others at risk of such an incident, you try to remain as safe a driver as possible.

There are literally thousands of restaurants in West Virginia and elsewhere around the country. Employees often work long hours prepping food to cook, serving customers and cleaning up after closing. While most business owners adhere to applicable labor laws, there are some who find themselves struggling with overtime and wage issues. In fact, an owner of two restaurants in another state has been required to pay back wages and damages to his employees following an investigation.

The U.S. Department of Labor discovered that the employees at the two restaurants were being paid only their straight wage rate, although they were working over 40 hours a week. This is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act that requires any hours worked over 40 to be paid at a time and a half rate. The restaurant owner must pay 91 current and former employees over $100,000 in back wages and damages.

Many West Virginia employees and others around the nation have activities they must perform before or after their specified work shifts. For example, employees have to walk to and from their cars to get to their workplaces. This type of activity would not be considered as part of their principal work activities and would, therefore, not be compensated according to Department of Labor laws. However, some companies try to add other preliminary or postliminary activities to their staff members. One corporation in another state recently settled a lawsuit for unpaid work time involving activities before their employees' designated work times.

Dick's Sporting Goods, a major retail company, conducted searches of its employees and their bags following their shifts. According to a lawsuit, the company failed to pay employees for this time between Mar. 2011 and Jan. 2015. The lawsuit involved a class of over 10,500 current and former Dick's employees. The lawsuit was settled for $2.9 million, and each employee should receive roughly $155 in the settlement.

There are many truck drivers in West Virginia and all across the country who are considered to be independent contractors at their places of employment. Often, companies use contractors as part of their workforces in addition to their full-time employees. While this arrangement can be beneficial to all parties involved, it can also be abused. Managers may begin treating their contractors just as they do their "regular" employees and violate labor laws. Recently, a major transportation company settled a lawsuit that stemmed from misclassification of its truck drivers as independent contractors.

Almost 20,000 truck drivers claimed in a class action lawsuit that Swift Transportation had misclassified them as contractors from 1999 to 2017. The claim, filed in 2009, stated that since the drivers were classified as independent contractors, they were not paid the legally required minimum wage. Therefore, according to the lawsuit, the company was violating the Fair Labor Standards Act. Officials at Swift tried to seek arbitration through the Federal Arbitration Act and through the arbitration laws of its state.