Get Your Company to PAY UP!
Get reimbursement from your employer for using your cell phone for work.
Have you ever been asked by your boss to use your cell phone for official business calls? At Schwan’s home delivery there was no reimbursement for using personal mobile phone for business calls. This irked a service manager named Colin Cochran who filed a suit against his bosses at Schwan’s when they did not agree to reimburse the money he had spent making business calls from his personal cell phone. Soon other service managers too ventured out and jointly they had filed a Class Action lawsuit. The case (Case No. B247160) was heard at the Court of Appeals in California. The court then gave the verdict that if an employee or team member makes use of his/her personal phone for business calls, it is mandatory for the employer to reimburse the proportionate amount of their cell phone bill.
The court referred to Section 2802 of the California Labor Code and based its verdict on it. The summary of the decision is:
The employer has to cover the expenses and/ or losses which an employee has to bear while going about his official duties or while following the orders of his bosses.
Interest may be levied if there is a delay in the reimbursement if it has been awarded by the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement or the court itself. The interest shall be calculated from the date when the employee had to bear the expenses or the losses.
Henceforth the term ‘necessary expenditures or losses’ shall refer to all the reasonable expenses, including the attorney’s fees which the employee had to pay in order to enforce his or her right to this section.
The case will then be redirected to the district court for class-action certification under which the entire class of 1500 members will get the chance to jointly sue Schwan’s Home Service.
If you are working a situation where you have been designated as an independent contractor when you should not be, this often leads to being denied reimbursement for qualifying expenses. We have tried many cases for exactly this reason. Not only could you stand to collect the expenses, but if you were misclassified you could be owed back overtime, wages, interest and penalties. There is a strict 4 year statute of limitations on employment cases like this so DO NOT WAIT, you could be owed a lot of money and UELG helps employees collect. CALL TODAY
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