Sibley et al v. Sprint Nextel Corporation et al

Filing 731

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE REGARDING JUDGMENT AS A MATTER OF LAW- Show Cause Hearing set for 7/28/2017 at 09:00 AM in KC Courtroom 476 (KHV) before District Judge Kathryn H. Vratil. The parties shall file their show-cause submissions as follows: (1) initial show-cause cross submissions of no more than 25 pages are due on July 7, 2017; (2) cross-responses of no more than 20 pages are due on July 21, 2017; and (3) no replies are permitted. These deadlines will not be continued. Signed by District Judge Kathryn H. Vratil on 6/13/2017. (ydm) (Additional attachment(s) added on 6/14/2017: # 1 Exhibit C to Doc# 731) (ydm).

Prepared by the Technical Advisor on June 13, 2017 

EX. C TO SHOW CAUSE ORDER REGARDING JUDGMENT AS A MATTER OF LAW
Exhibit C – Technical Advisor’s Identification from Experts’ Analyses of Class Members 
Who Were Underpaid, Overpaid, and Correctly Paid 
Experts’ Class Member Counts 
Each expert produced with their 2015 expert reports calculation summary files listing the 
computed under, over, or correct payments for each class member.  


For BE, the produced summary file is “NKA1413025.xlsxs” which lists 32,941 employees.1
Counsel for plaintiffs produced a corrected version of this summary table on March 17,
2016.2   



For Dr. Thornton, the produced summary file is SAS dataset
“countsbyemp2015update.sas7bdat” which lists 30,392 employees.3  Table 1 summarizes the
difference between BE and Dr. Thornton in total class member counts:
Table 1 - Class Member Counts Difference Between BE and Thornton's Analysis

Total Class Members Included in Dr. Thornton's Analysis
Total Class Members Included in BE's Analysis

3,098
1,043
671
734
650

[4]

Class Members Included by Thornton but not BE

30,392
32,941

[3]
[3a]
[3b]
[3c]
[3d]=[3]-[3a-c]

Class Members Included by BE but not Dr. Thornton
Class Members on ramp-up for only month in data
Additional Class Members with only one month in data
Class Members that worked only in an 'LA' store
Class Members without current explanation for difference

[1]
[2]

549

References:
[1] T hornton 2015 Report, pg. 5, fn. 10; "cnts2015update" SAS dataset.
[2] BE 2016 Rebuttal Report, p. 34 (¶96) cites an employee count of 33,941, while BE's final underpayment dataset contains
exactly 32,941 Class Members (Dkt. 626-3, NKA1413025.xlsx). The report count appears to be a typo.
[3a] Class Members on ramp-up according to Dr. Thornton's ramp-up dataset ("rebutcomp.dta" in DAT A10).
[3c] See NKA1413008,NKA1413010, NKA1413012, NKA1413014, NKA1413016, NKA1413018 datasets, employees with scid
starting with the words "LA".
Assumptions:
[3b] T hese may correspond to employees with only partial months which Dr. T hornton excluded but BE kept.
[3d] T his remaining unexplained difference could include, for example, Class Members who always have a negative "tearn"
value in the Compensation Statement data and Class Members whose only commission calculation months resulted in
extreme values (outliers identified and excluded by Dr. T hornton).
 See, e.g., BE 2015 Report, ¶246, App. D. 
 See March 17, 2016 email from Alex Baggio to Elise M. Bloom and Nicole Eichberger, et. al. 
3 See, e.g., Dr. Thornton’s “cnts4update” SAS program (see “DATA21\Programs”). 
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Prepared by the Technical Advisor on June 13, 2017 
As shown in Table 1, the number of total class members included in BE’s analysis (32,941) is 
different from the total included in Dr. Thornton’s analysis (30,392).  BE analyzes 3,098 
employees not included in Dr. Thornton’s class member list, and Dr. Thornton analyzes 549 
employees not included in BE’s.  

Experts’ Counts of Class Members Underpaid, Overpaid, or Correctly Paid 
BE calculated that out of 32,941 employees, 28,988 were underpaid, 3,498 were overpaid, and 
455 were correctly paid. Dr. Thornton calculated that out of 30,392 employees, 29,746 were 
overpaid, 629 were underpaid, and 17 were correctly paid. Table 2 presents this summary. 

Table 2 - Experts' Counts of Class Members Overpaid, Underpaid, and Correctly Paid

Total Class Size
Overpaid
Underpaid
Correctly Paid

Number of Class Members
from Dr. Thornton's Analysis
30,392
29,746
629
17

Number of Class Members
from BE’s Analysis
32,941
3,498
28,988
455

Requests from the Court  
The Court has asked me to produce the following lists of class members under two approaches: 
“Concession” and “Overlap”. 

Concession: 


For the 3,953 (=3,498+455 in Table 2) class members for whom BE calculated 
overpayments or correct payments, produce the list as Exhibit A1; 



For the 629 class members for whom Dr. Thornton calculated underpayments, produce 
the list as Exhibit B1. 

Under “Concession”, it may be that a subset of the 3,953 employees for whom BE calculated 
overpayments or correct payments was not among those in Dr. Thornton’s class list of 30,392.  
Similarly, it may be that a subset of the 629 employees for whom Dr. Thornton calculated 
overpayments was not among those in BE’s class list of 32,941. 

Overlap: 


Identify the class members for whom both BE and Dr. Thornton calculated 
overpayments or correct payments, produce this list as Exhibit A2; 
2 

Prepared by the Technical Advisor on June 13, 2017 


Identify the class members for whom both BE and Dr. Thornton calculated 
underpayments, produce this list as Exhibit B2. 

Summary of Technical Advisor’s Findings 

Table 3 - "Overlap" versus "Concession" Counts of Employees

Total Class Size
Overpaid
Underpaid
Correctly Paid

Number of Class Members
from Dr. Thornton's Analysis
30,392
29,746
629
17

Number of Class
Members from BE’s
Analysis
32,941
3,498
28,988
455

[4] Number of Class Members Underpaid According To Dr. Thornton's Calculation
[5] Number of Class Members Overpaid or Correctly Paid According To BE
[6] Overlap Number of Class Members Between [4] and [5]
Overlap Approach
Exhibit A2 Class Member Count = [1]+[3]
Exhibit B2 Class Member Count = [2]

Number of Overlap Class
Members between Dr.
Thornton and BE
29,843
2,572 [1]
537 [2]
2 [3]
629
3,953
64

2,574
537

Method Used By The Technical Advisor 
BE’s summary file “NKA1413025.xlsx”: 


Uses the corresponding unique employee identifier “UEID” created by BE4; and 



Contains employee names; 

Dr. Thornton’s summary file “countsbyemp2015update. sas7bdat”: 


Uses an employee identifier originated from the data field “hdr_vc_empnum” found in 
the Sprint data; and 



Does not contain employee names.   

In order to compare BE’s file with Dr. Thornton’s file to identify overlaps, an employee 
identifier crosswalk file is needed to merge the two, given the different employee ID types 
included in each summary file. 

 See, e.g., BE 2015 Report, ¶47. 

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Prepared by the Technical Advisor on June 13, 2017 
The produced employee ID crosswalk file “beids.txt” lists the BE UEID identifiers and the 
corresponding Sprint employee ID (“hdr_vc_empnum” aka “repid”5), the latter of which is 
listed in Dr. Thornton’s damages summary file. The “beids.txt” employee ID crosswalk is a file 
used and referenced by Dr. Thornton as part of an ID match for her 2016 rebuttal analysis where 
she quantifies critiques/adjustments for BE’s analysis.6  As part of this analysis, Dr. Thornton 
generates the “hdr_vc_empnum” employee ID variable and sets it equal to the “repid” 
employee ID variable listed in the crosswalk file. 

Merging the summary calculation data with the UEID‐repid crosswalk enables the assignment 
of the employee names to Dr. Thornton’s calculation summary file.  Once the data is merged, it 
can be determined whether both BE and Dr. Thornton computed an overpayment, 
underpayment, or correct payment for each employee. 

Attachment A outlines the information I have reviewed for the determination of using 
“beids.txt” as a crosswalk to link the experts’ class member lists.7 

I will produce Exhibits A1, B1, A2, and B2, along with the SAS program and loglst file, to the 
Court, Special Master Cohen, and the parties’ Counsel and Experts. 

 See, e.g., Dr. Thornton’s “COMPONENT.do” STATA program, lines 7‐15 (see “DATA21\Programs”); 
BE 2016 rebuttal report, ¶81. 
6 See, e.g., Dr. Thornton 2016’s rebuttal report, ¶121, fn. 115, which references the STATA program 
“COMPONENT.do”. 
7 Exhibit B1 includes 28 class members not found BE’s class list and therefore the employees do not have 
an assigned BE ID. Thus, for these individuals, the employee names are determined using the following 
Dr. Thornton datasets: “ids.xlsx” (see DATA2); and “comp_s3.sas7bdat” (see DATA20\Data). 
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Prepared by the Technical Advisor on June 13, 2017 
Attachment A – Information Reviewed 

1) Employee ID crosswalk files: beids.txt; ids.xlsx; NKA1201436.xlsx 


beids.txt 
o

File location: “DATA10\Data” 

o

Lists BE’s UEID (under heading “BEUEID”) and corresponding RepID (under 
heading “Redpid (1)”) 

o


File does not include employee names 

NKA1201436.xlsx 
o
o

File includes BE’s ID’s and corresponding RepID’s (and other ID’s) 

o


File location: Appendix Docs for BE’s first expert report, dated 10.15.12 
File does not include employee names  

 ids.xlsx 
o

File location: “DATA2” 

o

File includes various corresponding Sprint system ID’s 

o

File does include employee names 

o

File does not include BE’s ID’s 

2) Locations of summary calculation files 


NKA1413025 
o



Appendix Docs for BE’s current report, dated 9.28.15 

countsbyemp2015update.sas7bdat 
o

“DATA21\Data” 

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