## Facts

- Frederick George Bright worked for a Houston hospital as a biomedical equipment repair technician, later promoted to senior technician.
- He worked a regular 40-hour schedule at the hospital (weekdays, daytime hours) and was paid hourly; overtime during those scheduled hours was paid at time-and-a-half.
- After promotion, Bright was required to carry a pager and remain on call during off-duty hours for emergency repairs of biomedical equipment.
- On-call conditions required that: (1) he not be so intoxicated that he could not perform repair work, (2) he be reachable by pager, and (3) he be able to arrive at the hospital within about 20 minutes of being called.
- The hospital did not require Bright to stay on the premises or at any fixed location; he commonly stayed at home and also went out to eat and ran errands while on call.
- Bright received pay only when he was actually called in to work, not for the time spent on call.
- Bright remained on call continuously for approximately eleven months, and he was called in for emergencies several times per week on average.
- After leaving the hospital for reasons unrelated to the on-call arrangement, Bright sued for overtime under the FLSA, arguing that his on-call hours should count as working time.

## Issues

1. Whether an employee’s off-premises on-call time, subject to a pager, sobriety requirement, and an approximately 20-minute response time, constitutes compensable “working time” under FLSA § 7(a)(1) when the employee is not actually called in.
2. Whether the long duration of uninterrupted on-call status (about eleven months) can, by itself, render on-call time compensable under the FLSA.
3. Whether the compensability determination on these undisputed facts could be resolved as a matter of law on summary judgment.

## Decision

- The en banc Fifth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the employer.
- The court held that, on the undisputed facts, Bright’s on-call time was not compensable working time under the FLSA.
- The court vacated the earlier panel decision that had found a fact issue and remanded.
- The court concluded that Bright could use his on-call time effectively for personal purposes and therefore was “waiting to be engaged,” not “engaged to wait.”

## Legal Principles

- On-call time is compensable under the FLSA only when the restrictions are so burdensome that the time is spent predominantly for the employer’s benefit, often framed as “engaged to wait” rather than “waiting to be engaged.”
- The key inquiry is whether the employee can use the on-call time effectively for personal purposes; off-premises on-call arrangements with modest restrictions commonly are noncompensable.
- The analysis of overtime under FLSA § 7 is performed on a workweek-by-workweek basis; the extended duration of an on-call requirement does not itself convert nonworking time into compensable hours.
- Where the material facts concerning the on-call restrictions and the employee’s ability to pursue personal activities are undisputed, compensability may be decided on summary judgment.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit held that an off-duty hospital technician’s continuous on-call time was not compensable under the FLSA because the pager, sobriety, and short-response requirements still left him able to use the time for personal activities, and the arrangement’s length did not change the weekly overtime analysis.


Bright v. Houston Nw. Med. Ctr. Survivor, Inc., 934 F.2d 671 (5th Cir. 1991) (en banc)