October 6, 2006

Source: WorkInjury.com
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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has just issued its opinion in the case of Dave Miller v. Farmers Insurance Exchange (Nos. 05-35080 and 05-35145), overturning the trial court which had ruled in favor of some 2,000 claims adjusters in a class action suit against Farmers, awarding them tens of millions of dollars in past overtime pay.

The trial court had reasoned that adjusters should be classified into various "classes," depending on the types of claims they handled and that only some would be exempt from the Department of Labor's overtime rules while others wouldn't.

The appeals court found such a classification system "unworkable" and said that, under the facts of the case, all the adjusters clearly fell within the exemption (from the overtime rules) spelled out in U.S. Code Section 541.203 under the facts of the case.

The exemption section applied to workers who had "discretion" within their job duties and, while the trial court had attempted to single out certain types of claims, and claims examiners handling those types of claims, as not really having discretion when performing their job duties, the appeals court disagreed and said that all their jobs included the requisite discretionary-type duties and were thus exempted from the overtime rules.

To read the full case, PLEASE CLICK HERE.*

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