Builder Wins New Shot at Overtime Claim in Livestock Pen Suit

Signet Builders Inc. must do more to show a construction worker suing the company for overtime falls within an agricultural worker exemption to a federal wage-and-hour law, the Seventh Circuit said.

Jose Ageo Luna Vanegas accused the nationwide construction company of failing to pay him overtime for his work on livestock confinement facilities. The lower court dismissed his case based on the Fair Labor Standards Act’s agricultural carve-out, but the facts in the record don’t “demonstrate the applicability of the exemption beyond debate,” the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said, reversing the outcome.

Signet hired Luna ...