East Texas Assisted Living — Phantom Lunch Breaks and Time Shaving
Capstone Cypress OpCo LLC d/b/a Cypress Place Assisted Living | Caregivers and Medication Technicians | Jefferson, Texas
Buenker Law filed a federal lawsuit against Cypress Place Assisted Living and its ownership entities on behalf of hourly caregivers and medication technicians whose recorded work hours were systematically reduced in the company’s timekeeping system. The lawsuit alleges that the defendants automatically subtracted 30 minutes per day from employees’ time records to account for a lunch break — but in practice, employees were required to remain on duty and perform their caregiving responsibilities throughout that period. They were not, in fact, taking a lunch break.
This type of violation — sometimes called "time shaving" — has a compounding effect on workers’ paychecks. When the fraudulent deduction pushes an employee’s recorded hours below 40, overtime pay that the employee actually earned is never paid. Workers who are providing continuous care in a residential assisted living setting cannot simply be deemed to be "off the clock" because a computer system says so. The FLSA requires that all time an employee is required to be on duty be counted as compensable work time.
The lawsuit was filed as a collective action on behalf of all hourly employees at the defendants’ Texas locations who were subjected to the same automatic deductions during the three-year period prior to filing. Both the operating entity (Capstone Cypress OpCo LLC) and its parent management company (MME Capital Holdings) are named as defendants.
Workers in similar situations may have legal rights under the FLSA. The statute of limitations is generally two years — three years if the employer’s conduct was willful. Time limits apply.
