Vitali v. Reit Management & Research, LLC

32 Mass. L. Rptr. 288
CourtMassachusetts Superior Court
DecidedJune 10, 2014
DocketSUCV201200588BLS1
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 32 Mass. L. Rptr. 288 (Vitali v. Reit Management & Research, LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Superior Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Vitali v. Reit Management & Research, LLC, 32 Mass. L. Rptr. 288 (Mass. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

Kaplan, Mitchell H., J.

The plaintiff, Donna Vitali, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, filed this action against the defendant, Reit Management & Research LLC (RMR), asserting claims for violation of G.L.c. 151, §1A, the statute governing overtime compensation (Count I), breach of contract (Count II), and unjust enrichment/quantum meruit (Count III). Thereafter, Vitali voluntarily elected not to pursue Counts II and III. The case is presently before the court on RMR’s motion for summary judgment dismissing Count I, and Vitali’s motion for class certification. For the following reasons, RMR’s motion for summary judgment is ALLOWED. As the case cannot proceed without its sole class representative, the motion for class certification has become moot.

BACKGROUND

The facts revealed by the summary judgment record, viewed in the light most favorable to Vitali, the non-moving party, are as follows.

RMR is a private company that primarily manages real estate held in the portfolios of public companies. It has a principal place of business in Newton, Massachusetts, as well as regional offices in twenty other locations. It employs both professionals and support staff. Vitali is a former at-will employee of RMR. She worked in the accounts receivable department of RMR’s corporate office in Newton from March 1, 1999 until October 14, 2011; her job title was “accounts receivable accountant.” She worked with other employees in an area in which each employee had a short-walled cubicle. Vitali was an hourly employee, compensated at a rate of $25.80 an hour in October of 2011. Her assigned work hours were 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., five days a week. RMR provided its hourly employees, including Vitali, with a paid one-hour meal break each work day. In consequence, RMR paid her for forty hours of work per week even though she was only required to “physically work” (as RMR uses that term) for thirty-five hours. According to Vitali, employees took their lunch when they could; there was no set schedule. This was consistently RMR’s policy since she started working at the company in 1999.

Occasionally, Vitali worked during lunch. For example, during "monthly closes, quarter closes, conference calls for bad debt, audits ... [or during periods of] software conversion,” Vitali was required to work during lunch. Vitali estimates that from 1999 to 2011, she consistently worked three to four times per week during lunch. According to Vitali, “there was never a lack of work” but whether she worked three or four times a week during lunch “depended on what came up and the volume” of work. Vitali believes that the people who came to her with work during lunch could [289]*289verify that she typically worked three or four times a week during lunch.2

When Vitali first started working at RMR, the company required Vitali and other hourly employees to report their hours worked on paper time sheets. The paper time sheets were designed to cause employees to enter the following information: time in for the day; time out for lunch; time back from lunch; time out for the day; and any approved overtime hours worked. The paper time sheets also allowed employees to record their vacation, sick, and holiday hours. On the bottom left-hand comer of each time sheet, immediately above the employee’s signature, was the following statement: “[e]mployees may NOT work overtime without advance approval from their supervisor” and “lunch time are not hours physically worked in the computation of OT.”

The paper time sheets in the summary judgment record reveal that on Monday, April 13, 2009, Vitali worked from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. with a one-hour lunch break from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. She noted on the time sheet that she had worked one hour of overtime “to do [a] spreadsheet for Charles & Brian Hurley.” She did not, however, receive any overtime compensation that week because she worked only twenty-two hours: she took two vacation days that week, Thursday and Friday. No other paper time sheets in the summary judgment record reflect any occasion on which Vitali worked during lunch or demonstrate that she was entitled to overtime compensation. At her deposition, Vitali acknowledged that none of the paper time sheets that she submitted indicated that she worked overtime, but she asserted that “we were just told to put our eight-hour days.” Vitali did not identify the person who told her this or when it was told to her.

RMR installed an electronic time keeping system in February 2010 called “Kronos.” In connection with the roll-out of Kronos, RMR distributed a manual to employees with written instructions regarding its use and an e-mail message dated February 9, 2010. The manual included instructions and sections entitled “Logging In,” “Updating Time,” and “Vlewing/Updating/Approving Time.” It informed employees that they should contact Melissa Juppe or Mike Parcels in payroll with any issues. Vitali would not confirm that she received the manual, but Vitali definitely received the e-mail message about Kronos on February 9, 2010, because she forwarded it to her personal e-mail address less than an hour after it was sent to her RMR email address. The February 9th e-mail from Payroll Manager Jill Tweedlie stated:

Starting Monday February 15, 2010 all of Galen Corporate and Newton Corporate should start using Kronos in place of paper timesheets. For the first two weeks of use, please complete a paper time sheet to ensure all time is captured correctly. Your network log in and password will grant you access to Kronos. Please try to access Kronos as soon as possible so that we may avoid or correct any bugs prior to going live. If you have trouble accessing Kronos, please email me, not the RMR help desk.
Hourly employees—
Please note that only hourly employees will have to time punch when first arriving to work and when leaving for the day. Please be sure to only punch into work at your regular scheduled time unless over time has already been discussed with your manager. Hourly employees do not have to punch in and out for lunch. If you are to work through a lunch, please use the “hours worked” code and add the amount of in time worked in increments of .25 only.
Please let me know if you would like to set up training via phone or live. I am available to set up individual or group training.

Vitali began submitting electronic time sheets through Kronos on February 15, 2010. Vitali’s Kronos time records for the period February 15, 2010 through October 14, 2011 show that she was compensated for fifteen hours of overtime during that period.

Vitali never entered any time in Kronos for work performed during her one-hour paid lunch break. However, on March 15, 2010, Vitali e-mailed the payroll department to notify them that she had worked through lunch. The e-mail from Vitali to Mike Parcels stated: “I was not able to take lunch today due to so much Intercompany and meetings the rest of the week, so I wasn’t sure how I mark that on my time sheet/Kronos.” Parcels forwarded the message to Juppe, and Juppe responded to Vitali as follows:

Thank you for the heads up Donna. If your physically worked hours for this week is over 40 hours we can discuss how the lunch time for today should be recorded.

Thereafter, Vitali responded to Juppe:

Ok lady it was just for Monday 3/15/10 that I was not able to take lunch. You can tell me Monday what I need to do I guess. Thanks.

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Related

Vitali v. Reit Management & Research, LLC
33 Mass. L. Rptr. 398 (Massachusetts Superior Court, 2016)

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Bluebook (online)
32 Mass. L. Rptr. 288, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/vitali-v-reit-management-research-llc-masssuperct-2014.