Nike Prevails On Bag Check Case

Seyfarth Synopsis: A recent court decision credited Nike's time and motion study showing employees spent mere seconds of time in off-the-clock bag checks, finding the checks to be too trivial and difficult to capture to require payment. In contrast, the class failed to present actual evidence showing any amount of compensable time spent by the class off-the-clock while managers inspected their bags or checked their jackets.

In Rodriguez v. Nike Retail Services, Inc., Nike defeated a class action alleging that hourly retail workers were owed money for the time they spent waiting for security inspections after they had clocked out and were exiting the store.

Nike hired an expert to conduct a study of exit inspections, which showed that the average inspection takes no more than 18.5 seconds and that 60.5 percent of all exits required zero wait time. Rather than submit contradictory evidence in response to Nike's 700 hours of video, which the court found to be