City Gear, LLC Wage and Hour Class Action

Case name: Denithia Pendergrass and Alena Kelley, et al. v. City Gear, LLC, et al.
Case type: Wage & Hour
Filed in: [U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee]
Docket: [Case No. 3:12-cv-01287]

Case Summary

In December 2012, Sanford Heisler Sharp and Barrett Johnston, LLC filed a Collective Action Complaint on behalf of store managers and assistant managers in the South and Midwest against urban clothing chain City Gear, alleging that the company had withheld more than $25 million in overtime pay, in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

The Complaint alleged that City Gear, LLC—owner-operators of a chain of retail clothing stores throughout the South and Midwest—violated the FLSA by forcing store managers and assistant managers to work more than 40 hours a week without providing overtime compensation by unlawfully classifying them as exempt salaried employees. According to the Complaint, City Gear unlawfully skirted wage and hour laws by pretending to pay the employees a salary while instead paying them an hourly wage up to a mandatory 45-hour-a-week threshold, then docking their pay for falling short of that threshold and failing to pay overtime for exceeding it.

In 2014, the parties reached a settlement in the case.