Sportmart Parent Firm Being Sued for Overtime

The parent company of the Sportmart chain is being accused in a lawsuit of failing to pay overtime to salaried assistant managers who contended they spent most of their time performing nonadministrative tasks.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Orange County Superior Court, seeks back pay of up to $4 million for approximately 300 employees in California, where the sporting goods chain has 30 stores.

It names as a defendant Colorado-based Gart Sport Co., which acquired the Sportmart chain in 1997.

The employees worked for the chain during the last four years, said James S. Davis, a Rancho Cucamonga-based attorney representing the plaintiffs.

“The failure to categorize the employees properly appears to be fairly typical of multi-state agencies,” Davis said. “They comply with federal law, not realizing California law is substantially different.”

In California, companies that deny overtime to salaried employees must be able to prove that the workers spend more than half their time on management, administrative or professional duties.

Sportmart denied the allegations Monday.

“We believe we are in compliance with all applicable laws,” said Nesa Hassanein, general counsel for Gart Sport and Sportmart Inc., its wholly owned subsidiary. She declined to comment further.

The lawsuit was filed in Orange County because the chain’s western regional offices are in Fountain Valley.

The chain’s Orange County stores are in Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Mission Viejo and Tustin.

The suit states that in addition to extended hours, the employees routinely spent more than half of their work time each day performing such duties as ringing up sales, cleaning floors, stocking shelves, scrubbing toilets and general maintenance.

It is also alleged that the minimum workweek consisted of at least 60 hours and that some employees worked 6 to 7 days in a row.

The case is similar to a suit against the Mervyn’s department store chain, which earlier this year agreed to pay $11.3 million to settle claims by thousands of salaried managers and assistant managers who said they should have received overtime because most of their time was spent on chores, such as stocking shelves.

Mervyn’s and its Minneapolis parent, Dayton Hudson Corp., admitted no wrongdoing in the settlements.

Similar suits have been filed against the Rite Aid drug store chain, Albertsons, Robinsons-May and Taco Bell.