Torres-Lopez

In their second amended complaint (“complaint”), appellant farmworkers allege that appellees (collectively, “Bear Creek Farms”) 1 violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219 ; the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (“AWPA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 1801-1872 ; and Oregon labor laws.

The alleged violations include the failure to pay the farmworkers the minimum wage required by state and federal law, and numerous statutory violations of record-keeping, reporting, safety, insurance, and registration requirements. The parties do not dispute that these violations occurred. Their only dispute concerns whether Bear Creek Farms was liable for the alleged violations as a “joint employer” of the farmworkers within the meaning of the FLSA, AWPA, and Oregon labor laws.

On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court concluded that Bear Creek Farms was not a joint employer of the farm-workers within the meaning of the FLSA and AWPA. In arriving at this conclusion, the district court considered the five regulatory factors set forth in 29 C.F.R. § 500.20 (h)(4)(H). These regulatory factors relate to whether an alleged joint employer exerts control…

Dissenting.

In the grand scheme of jurisprudence, this is not a difficult case of divining esoteric law or interpreting enigmatic statutes or regulations. This case involves a rather simple matter of applying undisputed facts to a number of factors derived from case law and Department of Labor regulations, in order to determine whether a cucumber grower is a joint employer of laborers hired to pick cucumbers, or whether the laborers are employees only of the labor contractor that hired them. Our role as appellate judges is to decide a basic type of adjudicatory conflict in which, as described by Cardozo, “the rule of law is certain and the application [to the facts] alone doubtful.”

To be sure, we may determine whether a given fact comes within the letter or spirit of each regulatory or non-regulatoiy factor by examining “logically determinable or empirically observable facts.” 2 In this respect, we must ensure logical soundness by vigorous fealty to concepts of analogy. Analogy is the quintessential method of comparison in which we carefully examine the quality of positive and negative resemblances in the facts and apply these resemblances to the controlling standard. Only…