{"id":310,"date":"2012-06-19T20:40:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T20:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/?p=310"},"modified":"2012-06-19T20:40:39","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T20:40:39","slug":"supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/","title":{"rendered":"SUPREME COURT DECISION REGARDING SALES REPS"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court of the United States recently decided in Christopher v. Smithkline Beecham Corp.<\/em> that pharmaceutical sales representatives are not entitled to overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (\u201cFLSA\u201d) because they satisfy the \u2018outside salesmen\u2019 exemption.\u00a0 The Court based their decision on the nature of the pharmaceutical sales reps\u2019 position and the rules and industry wide practices set forth in the pharmaceutical sales industry. \u00a0A pharmaceutical sales rep\u2019s objective is to enter into as many nonbinding commitment agreements with physicians as they can in order to promote their companies prescription drug and gain incentive pay.\u00a0 Pharmaceutical sales reps, also known as Detailers, typically worked 40 hours a week during business hours and an additional 10-20 hours a week attending events, returning calls and emails, and performing other tasks.\u00a0\u00a0 The Court found that these nonbinding commitments qualified as \u201csales\u201d at least \u201cin some sense,\u201d which is all that\u2019s required under the FLSA.\u00a0 The Court specifically noted the long, unrecorded hours, the lack of supervision, the difficulty in standardizing the work within a specific time frame and distributing it among several workers, and the Detailers\u2019 earnings (which were substantially greater than the minimum wage) to further establish their conclusion.\u00a0 The Court denied the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Petitioners\u2019 attempts to fully define a \u201csale\u201d under the FLSA, finding that they were too narrow, and instead determined that a broader definition applied.\u00a0 The Court used the specific language in the text to determine that Congress intended that the transaction need not technically be a sale, that the examples listed were only an illustrative list, rather than an exhaustive one, and that each industry\u2019s definition of an \u2018outside salesmen\u2019 must be judged separately based on their own respective sales methods.\u00a0 Finally, the Court explained that the long-standing practice of the DOL recognized and allowed Detailers to fall within the \u2018outside salesmen\u2019 exemption.\u00a0 Therefore, if Detailers were not exempt from overtime wages, it would create a sudden change in the industry standard that would undermine the fair warning principle, which requires fair warning be given in regards to the conduct a regulation prohibits or requires in order to avoid unfairly surprising one party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court of the United States recently decided in Christopher v. Smithkline Beecham Corp. that pharmaceutical sales representatives are not entitled to overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (\u201cFLSA\u201d) because they satisfy the \u2018outside salesmen\u2019 exemption.\u00a0 The Court based their decision on the nature of the pharmaceutical sales reps\u2019 position and the rules and industry wide practices set forth in the pharmaceutical sales industry. \u00a0A pharmaceutical sales rep\u2019s objective is to enter into as many nonbinding commitment …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23,1,22,27,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-action","category-employment-law","category-flsa-2","category-ny-labor-law","category-overtime-2"],"yoast_head":"\nSUPREME COURT DECISION REGARDING SALES REPS - New York Employment Lawyer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SUPREME COURT DECISION REGARDING SALES REPS - New York Employment Lawyer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court of the United States recently decided in Christopher v. Smithkline Beecham Corp. that pharmaceutical sales representatives are not entitled to overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (\u201cFLSA\u201d) because they satisfy the \u2018outside salesmen\u2019 exemption.\u00a0 The Court based their decision on the nature of the pharmaceutical sales reps\u2019 position and the rules and industry wide practices set forth in the pharmaceutical sales industry. \u00a0A pharmaceutical sales rep\u2019s objective is to enter into as many nonbinding commitment ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"New York Employment Lawyer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FSLawFirm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-19T20:40:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/FSLaw_Logo_Blue_FB.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"bschaffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"bschaffer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"bschaffer\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/749a268f980a6cee82fa2f713ef54852\"},\"headline\":\"SUPREME COURT DECISION REGARDING SALES REPS\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-06-19T20:40:39+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/\"},\"wordCount\":371,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Class Action\",\"Employment Law\",\"FLSA\",\"NY Labor Law\",\"Overtime\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.fslawfirm.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/supreme-court-decision-regarding-sales-reps\/\",\"name\":\"SUPREME COURT DECISION REGARDING SALES REPS - 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