On Friday, March 14, 2014, a field service engineer filed a Fair Labor Standards Act Complaint in federal court against Vital Diagnostics, Inc. (“Vital”).
The named Plaintiff was employed by the company for several years prior to filing the collective action lawsuit. He filed his FLSA claims on behalf of himself and other “similarly situated" employees, which includes “field service engineers,” “lab application specialists,” “instrument specialists,” and other titles performing similar duties. The Complaint alleges that Vital willfully denied its field service engineers, lab application specialists, and instrument specialists overtime pay by improperly classifying them as exempt from the FLSA’s overtime protections. The Complaint alleges that in this position, the named Plaintiff and those similarly situated actually performed non-exempt work; installing, repairing, troubleshooting, servicing (which included ongoing customer support), validating and/or maintaining clinical chemistry and hematology analyzers and the associated devices and equipment. The Plaintiff alleges in his complaint that he was paid a salary and received no overtime compensation for the many overtime hours he worked as a field service engineer.
Vital is a Delaware corporation with its U.S. corporate headquarters located in Lincoln, Rhode Island. It is a provider of products and services for the clinical laboratory in the traditional in-vitro diagnostics market. Vital manufactures and distributes clinical chemistry and hematology analyzers along with reagents. Vital employs field service engineers, instrument specialists, and application specialists throughout the U.S. The named Plaintiff primarily covered the southeastern part of the country but traveled all over.
Plaintiffs are represented by Rachhana T. Srey from Nichols Kaster, PLLP in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The case was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia and is titled Rector v. Vital Diagnostics, Inc., Court File No. 14-cv-00764-CAP.
Additional information may be found here or by calling Nichols Kaster, PLLP toll free at (877) 344-4628.
