Ann McLaughlin Secretary of Labor, U.S. Department of Labor, Plaintiff v. Joe H. Liu, Individually and Doing Business as J L Fashions, Defendants

The district court granted summary judgment to the Secretary in an action for violation of the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., during the period from February 1, 1983 to June 28, 1985. The Secretary’s showing in support of the motion consisted of two items. The first was a government investigator’s affidavit with accompanying photocopies of Liu’s original piecework records for the biweekly pay period ending April 6, 1985. These records demonstrated that during this pay period Liu did not pay an overtime premium for overtime work; rather, each employee’s total earnings were exactly equal to the value of the piecework he or she produced during all of the hours worked in that period. The second item upon which the Secretary relied was Liu’s response to the Secretary’s Requests for Admissions, in which Liu agreed with the statement that “[ejmployees paid piecework were paid only piecework.”

In opposition to the motion for summary judgment, Liu relied on his sworn declaration in which he asserted that he had paid an overtime premium for piecework performed during overtime hours for all pay periods except the period ending April 6,…