NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – A New York federal judge has approved a collective action class of Quest Diagnostics employees who accused the company of failing to pay minimum wage and overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
In an April 30 ruling, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos granted Maria Vecchio’s motion for conditional certification of an FLSA class of mobile medical examiners who worked for Quest Diagnostics or its subsidiary ExamOne World Wide Inc. in the last three years. Ramos also granted Vecchio’s consent forms and proposed notice.
Ramos’ decision comes after Vecchio’s attorneys filed a June 2016 class action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York. In addition to the allegations of minimum wage and overtime violations, the lawsuit states that the defendants did not provide employees proper wage statements or pay stubs and did not reimburse business expenses.
Specifically, the suit also states Quest Diagnostics failed to pay Vecchio minimum wage and overtime pay, maintain accurate records of her hours worked and reimburse her for work-related expenses. It also has allegations that the company did not pay her in a timely manner.
According to the opinion and order, Vecchio was a medical examiner for Quest Diagnostics from November 2013 to October 2016.
As a medical examiner, she was responsible for visiting “insurance customers at their homes or places of business” to perform physical exams and basic lab tests “for the purposes of insurance eligibility and underwriting.” She claims she wasn’t paid for the time spent traveling to customers or the lab work and paperwork she completed at home before and after appointments.
The suit states that although Vecchio was “instructed to clock in and out when performing paperwork or lab work at home,” she wasn’t compensated.
More than 430 Quest mobile medical examiners from at least 43 states and the District of Columbia have opted into the lawsuit, the opinion states.