MICHAUD v. MONRO MUFFLER BRAKE INC

Filing 69

ORDER DENYING REQUEST FOR PRELIMINARY APPROVALOF CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT denying 59 By JUDGE NANCY TORRESEN. (dfr)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MAINE
CHRISTOPHER MICHAUD
Individually and on behalf of all
others similarly situated,
Plaintiff,
v.
MONRO MUFFLER BRAKE INC.,
Defendant.

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) Docket No. 2:12-CV-353-NT
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ORDER DENYING REQUEST FOR PRELIMINARY APPROVAL
OF CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT
Before the Court is the parties’ joint motion for preliminary approval of a
class (the “Technician Class”) and for settlement of a group of claims at issue in
this case (the “Spiff Claims”) (ECF No. 59). On September 16, 2013, the Court held
a telephonic conference of counsel regarding this motion. The Spiff Claims involve
alleged underpayment of overtime to individuals employed at Monro since October
9, 2009. The alleged underpayment arose out of Monro’s failure to include in its
calculations for the rate of overtime pay amounts that Monro had paid to its
employees for tire installation and alignments, called “spiffs.” The claims are made
under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and under the state laws of the
jurisdictions in which the Technician Class plaintiffs worked. The settlement
proposed to extinguish claims under both federal and state law, but the operative
complaint at the time the parties moved for settlement did not assert claims under
the state laws at issue.

For this reason, following this conference, the Court issued a report and order
(ECF No. 61) that required the Plaintiffs to add class representatives for each state
encompassed by the proposed settlement and to amend their complaint to state
claims under the various state laws involved in the settlement. A Third Amended
Complaint was filed by the parties on September 27, 2013 (ECF No. 67). Although
the parties propose to settle Spiff Claims for employees in Maine, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, the parties have not added claims
under Rhode Island law. For this reason, the Court cannot accept the settlement
currently proposed. It may be revised to either exclude Rhode Island plaintiffs
altogether, or to simply exclude the extinguishment of state law claims for this class
of technicians. As part of any revision, the parties should also request approval of
the four sub-classes now named in the Third Amended Complaint.
The parties also represented that under the proposed settlement “[e]very
class member is getting more than their actual damages . . . .” Mot. for Prelim.
Approval of Settlement Agreement 11 (ECF No. 59). At the conference, the Court
stated that it wished to see the spreadsheet showing how the awards to each
plaintiff were calculated. At issue was the Court’s desire to verify that members of
the plaintiff class were indeed receiving more than their actual damages, and to
ascertain how much more than their actual damages they would be receiving. See
Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(e)(2) (requiring a court reviewing a proposed class action
settlement to ascertain whether it is “fair, reasonable, and adequate” prior to

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approval). The spreadsheet attached by the parties (ECF No. 64-1) does not allow
the Court to satisfy this inquiry.
For the foregoing reasons, the parties’ joint motion for class certification and
preliminary approval of settlement is DENIED without prejudice to the filing of a
revised motion.

SO ORDERED.
/s/ Nancy Torresen
United States District Judge
Dated this 9th day of October, 2013.

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