We won! Thanks to the courage, hard work, and integrity of the many System Administrators who provided information, assistance, and testimony at deposition and trial, the Plaintiffs and class members prevailed at trial on December 20, 2017. The trial was conducted in seven days spread over two weeks at the federal courthouse in New Haven for the District of Connecticut.
The lawsuit challenges CSC’s policy of misclassifying the lowest two levels of System Administrator (Associate Professional SA and Professional SA) as exempt from the overtime protections of federal and state law throughout the country. The SAs install, maintain, and support CSC’s clients hardware and software according to procedures and policies.
The lawsuit asserts claims under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, Connecticut wage and hour law, and California wage and hour law. It seeks overtime pay damages going back as far as 2010, up to the present. It also seeks additional remedies including liquidated damages, state law penalties, and reclassification of the System Administrators as nonexempt, so that they can be paid overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week.
A nine-person jury unanimously found that (1) the System Administrators were misclassified, should have been classified as nonexempt, and therefore should have been paid overtime pay for the hours they worked, and (2) CSC’s violation of the law was willful, justifying liquidated damages (doubling the overtime pay owed).
The case was filed on July 1, 2014. Judge Arterton certified the Connecticut and California classes on June 30, 2017.
The name of the case is Strauch v. Computer Sciences Corp., No. 14-cv-956.
(*Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.)
