Writer awarded overtime pay in latest Epic arbitration hearing

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The latest victory in arbitration with the medical-software company Epic Systems is another of the company’s former technical writers.

In 2015, 30 employees filed a class-action lawsuit against Verona-based Epic, asking the company to pay them back overtime wages. The company argued that the employees signed a class-action waiver as a condition of employment, so the claims had to be resolved individually through arbitration.

The case went up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a majority sided with Epic in 2018, finding that employment agreements can contain class-action waivers. As a result, the plaintiffs entered individual arbitration with Epic.

A Monday news release from Habush Habush & Rottier said technical writers have been victorious in the arbitration hearings. In the latest hearing, an arbitrator decided Epic misclassified the technical writer as overtime exempt and ordered the company to pay back overtime wages.

Jason Knutson and Breanne Snapp from Habush Habush & Rottier, and Caitlin Madden and Natalie Gerloff of Hawks Quindel represented the writer.

In a statement, Knutson said Epic has continued to do everything it can to deny paying employees overtime and has attempted to hide its conduct by forcing the cases into private arbitration. The company has spent millions on legal costs, Snapp said, while it could have solved the problem at a fraction of the cost by paying the overtime.

Madden said the results validate the clients’ years of working through the arbitration system to enforce the objectives of federal law. Follow @WLJReporter