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Overby v. Anheuser-Busch, LLC

https://www.ncjustice.org/

Carol Brooke

North Carolina Justice Center

Carol Brooke is a Senior Attorney with the Workers’ Rights Project at the North Carolina Justice Center in Raleigh. She primarily does class and collective action wage and hour litigation on behalf of low-wage workers, particularly farmworkers and H-2B workers.

Carol is a member of NCAJ’s Employment Law Section and Hispanic/Latino Divisions.

She earned her J.D. at UNC School of Law and has been an member of NCAJ since 2000.

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https://millerlawgroupnc.com/our-team/maryanne-m-hamilton/

MaryAnne Hamilton

Miller Law Group, PLLC

MaryAnne represents clients in whistleblower, employment, medical negligence, and civil rights cases. She shepherds potential whistleblowers and those who have experienced discrimination or harassment in their workplace through the process of asserting their rights. In her practice, MaryAnne combines an intense focus on the needs of her clients with an ability to distill complex issues in a way that both makes them understandable and highlights the key issues. 

MaryAnne, working alongside Miller Law Group Founder, Stacy Miller, is working to handle claims from victims exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, known as the Camp Lejeune Justice Act. This new legislation will clear the way for United Stated veterans and others exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune to bring claims for personal injury and wrongful death caused by toxic exposure.

Professionally, MaryAnne developed and honed her analytical and writing skills in her previous career as a freelance editor, writer, and editorial project manager for clients in academia, business, and technology. Her authors have published in anthropology, history, landscape architecture, pharmaceutical innovation, public health, and law. 

MaryAnne is licensed in North Carolina and South Carolina; her licensure in the District of Columbia is pending. She is admitted to the bar of the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts of North Carolina. 

MaryAnne graduated summa cum laude from Campbell Law School. At Campbell, she participated in the moot court program, earning a Best Brief Award — from among more than 50 competitors — at the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition; served on Law Review; and worked as a research assistant to two professors. MaryAnne has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.S. in Business Management, with a minor in Engineering, from the University of Maryland. She also served in the U.S. Navy.

Opinion Filed Pending
Amicus Brief Writers Carol Brooke MaryAnne Hamilton
Court 4th Circuit Court of Appeals
Docket No. No. 25-1520

Plaintiffs are a class of approximately 500 workers at Defendant’s brewery in Williamsburg, Virginia. They brought claims against Defendant alleging wage theft. Specifically, workers were required to perform various work-related tasks both before and after their shifts. For example, they were required to arrive before their shifts, undergo COVID screenings, don/doff protective equipment, stay after shift for clean-up, etc. These policies were facility-wide, as pay was tied not to actual clock times, but to stated shift hours. The result is that workers were required to be on site for time for which they were not paid.

The trial court granted class certification under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In addition, a Fair Labor Standards Act opt-in class had already been conditionally certified. In addition to certifying the Rule 23 class, the trial court declined to decertify the FLSA opt-in class of 71 workers. In this interlocutory appeal, Defendant seeks to decertify both the Rule 23 class and the FLSA opt-in class, relying heavily on perceived differences between the experiences of the individual Plaintiffs. In response, Plaintiffs emphasize that this case challenges a specific set of policies that applied to the detriment of all workers at the brewery.

NCAJ worked in conjunction with the National Employment Law Project, Impact Fund, and the North Carolina Justice Center to file an amicus brief in support of Plaintiffs. The brief begins by surveying the broad and disturbing scope of wage theft, which takes many forms and costs American workers vast sums of money. Much of this money is withheld from the most vulnerable of workers. Sadly, governmental enforcement mechanisms have proven insufficient to address this problem. Class actions and collective actions often fill this enforcement gap, serving as indispensable mechanisms to allow workers to collectively redress wage theft. Even where the amount in controversy for an individual worker may not support the expense of litigation, the cumulative effect of large-scale wage theft can be significant. Class actions and FLSA collective actions are therefore necessary to hold employers accountable.