A Chesapeake home healthcare company and its owners must pay more than $1.5 million — $759,698 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages — to 194 employees after the US Department of Labor obtained a summary judgment in federal court. Entered in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk, the judgment follows a complaint filed in September 2020 and litigation by the department’s Office of the Solicitor. The court required that Kynd Hearts Home Health Care LLC and its co-owners, Shawndell D. Harris and Alvonda Evans to pay the back wages and liquidated damages for willful violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The judgment upholds the results of an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division that specifically found Kynd Hearts Home Health Care LLC:
- Failed to pay certain non-exempt employees the proper overtime premium and instead paid straight time for hours over 40 in some workweeks.
- Developed a pay scheme to reduce employees’ hourly rates the more hours employees worked and then paid an overtime rate based on the reduced hourly rate, not the regular hourly rate.
- Failed to show total premium pay for all overtime hours worked in a workweek in its payroll records.
In a prior investigation in 2014, the department’s Wage and Hour Division found the employer’s pay practices violated the FLSA. Given the intentional nature of the violations, the department assessed a civil money penalty of $226,512. In addition to the back wages and damages payment, the judgment permanently forbids the employers from future FLSA violations.
