Five suits filed in Texarkana as 61 FedEx overtime lawsuits hit Arkansas federal court in one day

TEXARKANA, Ark. – Sixty-one separate lawsuits against Federal Express Corp. were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas on Wednesday, five of them in the court’s Texarkana Division, court records show.

Each case lists a single plaintiff against the shipping company. The Texarkana filings were brought by plaintiffs named Cameron, Mouser, Vallejos, Dunn and King, according to the court’s docket. The other 56 were filed in the El Dorado, Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Harrison and Hot Springs divisions, and all 61 have been assigned to U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks in Fayetteville.

One of the Texarkana plaintiffs, Christopher King, says he worked as a delivery driver for FedEx in Miller County but was paid by intermediary companies that FedEx calls “independent service providers,” according to his 15-page complaint, filed Thursday. King says he drove a vehicle weighing less than 10,001 pounds, regularly worked more than 40 hours a week and was never paid overtime. His lawyers are Bradley Manewith and Shannon Liss-Riordan of the Boston firm Lichten & Liss-Riordan.

The filings follow a nearly identical wave in the Eastern District of Arkansas, where suits against Federal Express have been arriving since Sept. 28. Docket records for those cases describe each as a Fair Labor Standards Act claim for denial of overtime compensation, and later filings have been designated as related to the first, Taylor v. Federal Express Corp. The same firm is listed as counsel in those cases.

Lichten & Liss-Riordan is behind a nationwide campaign of individual suits by FedEx delivery drivers that began after a federal judge in Pittsburgh broke up their mass lawsuits this spring.

More than 30,000 drivers had opted into a collective action, Claiborne v. FedEx Ground Package System, in the Western District of Pennsylvania before it was voluntarily decertified. Their lawyers then refiled the claims as three mass actions in the same court, with more than 14,000 named plaintiffs. On May 18, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Colville severed every plaintiff’s claim, declined to transfer the cases and ordered the drivers to file “in an appropriate forum by no later than 60 days from the date of this Order.” “Failure to do so will result in any such lawsuit being time-barred,” the order says. A summary of the ruling published by the defense firm Duane Morris said the judge found the drivers’ claims were improperly joined.

King’s complaint says he had opted into the Claiborne collective action and was one of the named plaintiffs in the third of the three mass actions, Smith v. Federal Express, before his claim was severed. The parties agreed to pause the 60-day deadline while they tried mediation, which failed, the complaint says. Colville’s order is attached to the suit as an exhibit. The drivers’ lawyers have been filing the same complaint, with only the plaintiff and the district changed, in federal courts across the country since early September. Seven suits were filed in Michigan and New York on Sept. 4, Top Class Actions reported. Sixty-four Nevada drivers filed Sept. 29 and 30, Hoodline reported, citing the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and Liss-Riordan said filings were continuing nationwide and would wrap up in “a couple more weeks.” More than 10,000 drivers are involved, that report said.

The complaint lays out the theory the drivers are pursuing. King says he and other drivers reported to FedEx terminals, wore FedEx uniforms, drove trucks with FedEx logos, scanned packages with FedEx-owned scanners and followed FedEx rules on everything from signature requirements to personal appearance, and that FedEx keeps the scanner data showing their hours. They say FedEx set the price it paid contractors for each route without accounting for overtime, and that FedEx can suspend or terminate any driver under a list of 31 disqualifying offenses. Because King drove a vehicle weighing 10,000 pounds or less, the complaint says, he is not covered by the exemption that excludes many commercial truck drivers from overtime pay. Each suit brings a single count for unpaid overtime and seeks back pay, liquidated damages, interest and attorneys’ fees, with a jury demand.

FedEx told the Review-Journal that its service providers “are contractually and legally obligated to comply with wage-and-hour laws” and that it looks forward to addressing the issues in court. The company has said the contractors, not FedEx, are the drivers’ employers.

The Texarkana Division of the Western District of Arkansas hears federal cases from Miller, Hempstead, Howard, Lafayette, Little River, Nevada and Sevier counties.

A lawsuit presents only one side of a dispute. The allegations have not been proven in court.