Case Update: Dairy Drivers Settle Overtime Lawsuit

Here is an update on another case we’ve been following, which we originally wrote about nearly a year ago in a post entitled The power of punctuation: Commas, business contracts and the law. In March 2017, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a group of dairy drivers were non-exempt employees entitled to overtime pay based on the omission of an Oxford comma from the state’s wage and hour statute. Last Thursday, the parties agreed to settle the case for $5 million, pending Court approval, and the Maine legislature has revised the statute to include semicolons, which will likely make these drivers exempt from overtime going forward.