Alaska Employment Law

The Alaska Supreme Court this morning affirmed Judge Mark Rindner’s award of overtime compensation, liquidated damages, and actual fees. 

The employer admitted to misclassifying the employee (a registered nurse in a “home infusion department”) as exempt, and further admitted failing to keep accurate time records (it didn’t contest the employee’s claim that it had instructed her to write “eight hours” regardless of her daily time).  The employer also did not assert a good faith defense to liquidated damages. 

The employer did, however, claim that it had submitted sufficient evidence of the employee’s actual hours to rebut the employee’s estimates.  The Supreme Court affirmed Rindner’s rejection of that argument.

The employee arrived at her hours by estimating the number of professional visits (based on mileage records), and then multiplying that number by an average length of each visit, and then adding time for administrative tasks associated with each visit.  Rindner found that the employee had met her burden under Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946), and adopted that formula.  The employer, in turn, sought to meet its burden under Barios v. Brooks Range Supply, Inc., 26 P.3d 1082 (Alaska 2001), by showing that the employee’s nursing and progress notes didn’t support the employee’s estimates.  Based on the “ample evidence” of the “general inaccuracy” of the notes, and the supervisor’s concession that her oversight of the employee was “very loose,” the Supreme Court held that the employer’s countervailing evidence was “neither precise enough nor conclusive enough to show that [the employee’s] wage claim is unreasonable.”  Op. at 10.  

The Court (per Justice Eastaugh), thus, affirmed an OT award of $32,000 in wages, $7,000 in prejudgment interest, another $32,000 in liquidated damages, and $156,000 in fees and costs.  The employee, presumably, will also get actual fees and costs for the appeal.

Geneva Woods Pharmacy, Inc. v. Thygeson, Op. No. 6255 (Alaska Apr. 25, 2008)

Richard Maki and David Shoup of Tindall Bennett in Anchorage represented the employee.  Stanley Lewis of Birch Horton, also of Anchorage, represented the employer.