A federal judge has ordered that oil and gas workers who were awarded overtime pay at trial in a Fair Labor Standards Act case are now entitled to twice the amount the jury handed up.

U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney of the Western District of Pennsylvania approved the eight plaintiffs' request for liquidated damages, doubling the combined amount of back overtime from approximately $498,000 to nearly $1 million.

According to Kearney's opinion, the workers were employed by Oil States Energy Services to work on hydraulic fracturing sites. The plaintiffs, who filed suit under the FLSA, were the second group of three trial groups in the case.

Kearney said the first group was tried in the fall of 2017 and, following the jury's verdict in the employees' favor, he granted the employees' motion for liquidated damages. Kearney found that “Oil States did not adduce evidence of its good faith and reasonable efforts to determine whether it should pay overtime to these employees.”

The plaintiffs in the current group were tried last month and repeated the same evidence used in the first trial.

“To supplement its proofs from the first trial, Oil States hoped to adduce evidence from one of its employees—Rhonda Totten—who allegedly played a role in deciding whether to characterize the Group 2 plaintiffs as exempt from overtime,” Kearney said. “Consistent with Oil States' discovery responses, we permitted Ms. Totten to testify only as to 'knowledge of human resources support for the locations at issue.' Shortly before trial, Oil States filed an unsolicited 'report' again asking to expand Ms. Totten's testimony beyond Oil States' years of discovery representations.”

The plaintiffs moved to exclude Totten's testimony because Oil States didn't disclose her role in response to a specific discovery request and only identified her as having knowledge of human resources support for the locations at issue, Kearney said.

“Given the omnipresent issue of Oil States' decision to treat the employees as exempt, we could not liberally rewrite Oil States' years of discovery representations which did not disclose her knowledge or role in deciding the exempt status of the employees,” Kearney said. “If, as Oil States argued on the eve of trial, Ms. Totten played a central role in deciding the exempt status, it should have candidly answered the plaintiffs' April 22, 2016, Interrogatory No. 22 asking to '[i]dentify each of your employees who was involved in determining whether the … plaintiffs were subject to the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act.'”

Kearney added, “After oral argument, we found no good cause to allow this last-minute witness although each of the five identified witnesses could testify as to Oil States' decision.”

In its motion for liquidated damages, the plaintiffs claimed Oil States did not adduce evidence of good faith.

“Oil States argues uncertainty in the law excuses its good faith review of whether the Group 2 plaintiffs are exempt from overtime. We cannot reach this far,” Kearney said. “Oil States might be closer to the required good faith if it adduced evidence of reviewing the issues and reaching some form of considered decision. There is no evidence of this effort.”

A. Patricia Diulus-Myers of Segmiller & Associates, representing Oil States, and Zachary Warren of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., the plaintiffs' attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.