Darling v. Dignity Health

Background

The plaintiffs brought a proposed collective and class action alleging wage violations under federal, California, and Nevada law. They alleged that healthcare employees were required to record patient-care notes in the Cerner electronic medical-record system before or after shifts and during meal breaks, even though they were required to record working time separately through the Teams system. The plaintiffs attributed this alleged unpaid work to understaffing and policies requiring advance approval for overtime.

Ana Jara moved for conditional certification of a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Her proposed collective included nonexempt, hourly-paid patient-care employees who made entries in the electronic medical-record system while not clocked into the timekeeping system. Eight people had already opted into the litigation and submitted declarations describing similar alleged work practices.

Legal standard

The Fair Labor Standards Act permits employees with similar legal or factual issues to litigate together if they affirmatively join in writing. The Ninth Circuit uses a two-stage process. At the first, notice stage, the court applies a lenient standard and asks whether the proposed participants are similar in a way that matters to resolving their claims. This stage does not decide whether the employer is ultimately liable. After discovery, the defendants may seek decertification under a stricter standard based on the developed evidence.

Court’s analysis

The court concluded that Jara and the opt-in employees had sufficiently shown similar issues of fact and law. The alleged common issues included the requirement to complete charting, alleged understaffing, overtime preapproval requirements, and whether Cerner records could be compared with Teams records to identify charting performed while employees were off the clock.

The court rejected the defendants’ arguments that conditional certification required evidence of an express instruction to work off the clock or a written policy encouraging that practice. It also rejected the argument that the Cerner records could not support the required showing concerning the defendants’ knowledge. The court noted allegations that employees had to make entries at the defendants’ facilities, where the work could be observed, and that the Cerner system recorded the timing of those entries. Whether the defendants actually knew or should have known about unpaid work remained for later proceedings.

The court separately addressed Dignity Community Care. It found that neither the named plaintiffs nor the opt-in plaintiffs offered evidence that they were or had been employed by Dignity Community Care. The court also found that the operative complaint and motion contained no specific allegations against that defendant, and the plaintiffs did not address the problem in their reply.

Order

The court GRANTED conditional certification of an FLSA collective action against Dignity Health and Dignity Health Medical Group Nevada LLC only. It APPROVED the attached revised collective-action notice, which stated that the collective covered qualifying employees from August 27, 2017, through the present. The court DENIED the motion for conditional certification as to Dignity Community Care only and terminated Docket No. 42.