534 Sacramento Metro Firefighters Win $1.38 Million in FLSA Overtime Settlement

In April 2017, Sacramento Metro Fire District employee Tracey Valentine filed a federal collective action lawsuit alleging the district had been underpaying overtime to hundreds of firefighters, EMTs, engineers, and support staff for years. The core legal problem was how the district calculated the 'regular rate of pay,' the baseline figure the Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to use when computing overtime premiums.

The district paid some employees a cash benefit when those workers declined employer-sponsored health insurance. It also paid firefighters assigned to 24-hour shifts a 'holiday-in-lieu' amount in place of a day off when a holiday fell on a non-working day. The complaint alleged both payments were remuneration that had to be folded into each worker's regular rate before overtime was computed. By leaving them out, the district effectively shrank the overtime multiplier and shorted workers on every overtime hour they worked.

A federal judge conditionally certified the case as a collective action in October 2017, allowing 534 current and former district employees to join as opt-in plaintiffs. That number itself reflected the breadth of the alleged miscalculation across the workforce.

David E. Mastagni of Mastagni Holstedt, APC, along with colleagues Ace Thomas Tate, Ian Barclay Sangster, and Isaac Sean Stevens, represented the collective. The district was defended by Liebert Cassidy Whitmore.

After multiple rounds of settlement negotiations through 2018, the parties reached a deal totaling $1,376,827.22, covering all back overtime, attorneys' fees, and costs. The agreement also required the district to incorporate holiday-in-lieu pay into its overtime calculation going forward, effective March 2018, and to pay back overtime tied to cash-in-lieu payments for the period from April 20, 2014 through January 2018. U.S. District Court Judge Kimberly J. Mueller granted joint approval of the settlement on February 15, 2019, and the case was closed.