A lawsuit filed against Tacoma, Wash.-based Interstate Distributor Co. alleging that it unlawfully failed to pay overtime wages to its interstate drivers has no merit, according to an attorney for the company.


Larry Westberry, a former long-term employee of Interstate Distributor, claims that the company broke state law by paying him same amount per mile even when he worked more than 40 hours a week. According to Stephen Strong, a partner at the law firm Bendich Stobaugh & Strong, Washington-based employers are required to pay their employees one-and-a-half times their regular rate of pay when they work more than 40 hours per week, even if the work is performed out of state. (See previous story.)

Phil Talmadge, attorney with Seattle-area law firm Talmadge Fitzpatrick, says the company's position is that the lawsuit is non-meritorious. "The named plaintiff is a disgruntled former employee of the company, terminated for a variety of acts that were inappropriate," Talmadge says. "This guy is an acknowledged Georgia resident. He lives in the state of Georgia, was working principally in Georgia, he has a Georgia CDL, he paid Georgia state income taxes. The argument that he's somehow subject to Washington state overtime law because the company is located in Washington is an unbelievably broad stretching of Washington's overtime wage law jurisdiction, in the view of the company."

Talmadge explains that the lawsuit stems from a Washington State Supreme Court Decision last year involving an interstate truck driver that said if you are a Washington state employee you had the right to pursue overtime compensation under Washington law if you worked more than 40 hours a week, regardless of where you worked those hours. It was a matter of an individual based in Vancouver who drove interstate.

Prior to this lawsuit, he says, an 18-year-old regulation said employees were only entitled to overtime if they worked over 40 hours in Washington state.

"But this [lawsuit] is a huge extension of a decision that said if you're a Washington based employee you're entitled to overtime wage, to a guy that has virtually no connection with the state of Washington other than the fact that his employer has its headquarters in Washington state," Talmadge says. He notes that a majority of states have specific exemptions for interstate employees in their overtime wage laws and in some instances specifically for interstate truck drivers. It's hard to make the case, he said, that Washington state law could somehow reach out and invalidate those exemptions in other states for employees who live in those states.

When asked about what effect the Supreme Court decision has had on drivers who do in fact live in the state, Talmadge said, it hasn't had a huge effect. That's because it is generally accepted that the pay per mile for truck drivers reflects a factor of overtime built into it.