On February 4, 2019, in the case of Ward v. Tilly’s Inc., a California Court of Appeal issued a ruling requiring employees who are subject to on-call scheduling to be paid reporting time pay of at least two hours – even when the employees do not have to physically report to work for a shift and simply need to place a short phone call to determine whether they are needed.

The New York legislature recently enacted two new statutes that became effective January 1, 2019. Notably, these statutory changes will have a significant impact on admissibility of certain evidence at trial.

In December 2018, the Fifth Circuit in Randle v. Crosby Tugs, LLC affirmed the lower court’s granting of summary judgment related to the plaintiff’s claim of Jones Act negligence.

(United States of America v. Nature’s Way Marine, LLC, Environmental Pollution Group, LLC, Fifth Circuit No. 17-60698, decided September 21, 2018)

In Bunker Holdings Ltd. v. Yang Ming Liberia Corp., the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals clarified what it means to order necessaries “on the order of the owner of a person authorized by the owner” under 46 U.S.C. Sec. 31342(a), so as to permit the entity furnishing necessaries to have a maritime lien.

As employers begin to develop their compliance agenda for 2019, one area of focus often is (and should be) reviewing and updating wage and hour practices to comply with legislative and regulatory developments. Employers have been faced with uncertainty, however, regarding the status of the proposed changes to the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime exemption regulations.