## Facts

- Tyson Foods operated a pork-processing plant in Storm Lake, Iowa, employing hourly production-line workers in the “kill,” “cut,” and “retrim” departments.
- Workers were required to don and doff protective and sanitary gear and perform related tasks (including cleaning tools) before and after “gang time” at their workstations; the gear varied by job and day.
- Tyson compensated some workers for some of this time but did not record the actual donning-and-doffing time for each employee.
- Employees alleged that the uncompensated time, when added to recorded hours, caused many to exceed 40 hours per week, triggering overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and parallel state law.
- Because Tyson lacked time records, employees offered representative proof: an expert conducted observations and calculated average daily donning/doffing times (approximately 18 minutes for cut/retrim and 21.25 minutes for kill), which were added to timesheets to estimate overtime.
- The district court certified a Rule 23(b)(3) class for state-law wage claims and a collective action under FLSA § 216(b); a jury awarded roughly $2.9 million; the Eighth Circuit affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether employees may use representative/statistical evidence to prove hours worked and damages on a class/collective basis when the employer failed to keep adequate records, and whether common questions predominate under Rule 23(b)(3).
2. Whether the judgment is improper if a classwide, lump-sum verdict could permit recovery by class members who were not injured (i.e., did not work overtime even with added donning/doffing time).

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for the employees.
- The Court held that the district court did not err in admitting and relying on the representative time study to establish uncompensated work time and to support class/collective adjudication.
- The Court concluded that common questions, including compensability of donning and doffing and the general amount of time required, predominated under Rule 23(b)(3) on the record presented.
- The Court declined to decide whether the presence of uninjured class members would invalidate the judgment, leaving allocation and distribution issues for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- There is no categorical rule barring or permitting representative/statistical evidence in class actions; admissibility and use depend on the purpose of the evidence and the elements of the claim.
- A key inquiry is whether the same representative proof could be used by each plaintiff in an individual action; if so, aggregation in a class does not make it improper.
- When an employer fails to keep legally required time records, employees may prove hours worked by producing sufficient evidence to permit a “just and reasonable inference,” shifting the burden to the employer to negate that inference.
- Rule 23(b)(3) predominance is a functional inquiry; a class may be proper even if some individualized matters remain, so long as central common issues predominate.

## Conclusion

The Court allowed employees to use an expert’s representative time study to prove unpaid donning-and-doffing work in a Rule 23 class and FLSA collective action where the employer lacked adequate records, holding that common questions predominated and reserving any broader ruling about recovery by uninjured class members.


Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442 (2016)