The court of appeals affirmed a district court judgment. The court held that pharmaceutical industry sales representatives are “outside salesmen” exempt from the overtime wage requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (Glaxo) employed Michael Christopher and Frank Buchanan as Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives (PSRs), which the company classified as “outside salesmen.” As such, Christopher and Buchanan would make “calls” on physicians to encourage them to prescribe Glaxo’s “Rx only” products, meaning those products which could be dispensed to the public only with a licensed physician’s prescription.
