On September 1, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina granted conditional certification in Kirkpatrick v. Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions, Case No. 1:16CV1088, to a collective of I/DD Care Coordinators. I/DD stands for Intellectual/Development Disability. The court also refused Cardinal’s request to throw out the consent forms of workers who had already joined this Cardinal Innovations overtime lawsuit. The Siegel Law Group represented the workers.
United States District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder signed the Memorandum Opinion and Order on September 1, 2017. He granted the plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification and denied Cardinal’s motion to strike.
At the time of the order, the named plaintiff worked for Cardinal as an I/DD coordinator. Cardinal treated these coordinators as exempt from overtime under the FLSA’s learned-professional exemption. She alleged that she and other coordinators routinely worked over forty hours a week on tasks outside that exemption, without overtime pay. She filed eight almost-identical declarations from herself and seven coordinators who had joined.
Conditional certification granted. The court approved notice to the FLSA collective it defined in 2017 as: “All persons who are, have been, or will be employed by Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions as I/DD Care Coordinators within the State of North Carolina at any time within the last three years.”
Cardinal argued there was no common unlawful policy. The court called much of that a merits argument, and said a plaintiff need not show conclusively at this stage that the policy is unlawful. Cardinal also attacked the nearly identical declarations. The court responded: “Declarations are, of course, factual support.”
The court also noted two admissions in Cardinal’s answer. All its I/DD coordinators were classified as exempt under the learned-professional exemption. And they all had the same job descriptions, qualifications, and duties.
Next, Cardinal argued that the exemption calls for a worker-by-worker review. The court cited cases that granted conditional certification on learned-professional misclassification claims. It pointed to evidence on three points:
Arguments about differences in location, skills, and expertise went too deeply into the merits to decide at that stage.
Motion to strike denied. Cardinal said the plaintiff had solicited (recruited) members through local newspaper ads before asking for conditional certification. Counsel’s sworn declaration said the seven employees whose forms were filed approached counsel without any solicitation and before any ads ran. The court found no evidence that counsel solicited those forms, and no basis in the FLSA, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or the case law to strike them.
Notice terms. The court made none of the six changes Cardinal asked for in the notice and opt-in form. It allowed ninety days to join, not forty-five, finding that “ninety days is no longer than necessary to gather the class.”
It declined to add warnings about depositions, fees and costs, or choosing other counsel. It also declined to add Cardinal’s attorneys’ contact information or to rewrite the consent language.
Conditional certification lets people who do the same job learn about a case and decide whether to join. Here, that meant I/DD Care Coordinators across North Carolina, not only those who had already come forward.
The ruling also protected workers who acted early. Their consent forms stayed in the case. Conditional certification is not a finding that the coordinators were misclassified or that Cardinal broke the law; the merits are decided later.
The FLSA requires employers to pay non-exempt workers time and a half for hours over forty in a workweek. Under Department of Labor rules, the learned-professional exemption generally covers a salaried worker whose main duty requires advanced knowledge in a field of science or learning. That knowledge is usually gained through a long course of specialized study. A job title or degree alone does not prove the exemption; the actual main duty matters.
The coordinators said in their declarations that they lacked the schooling and credentials of learned professionals. They said they routinely did tasks that did not need special skills or training. Cardinal pointed to some coordinators’ credentials and to the education requirements for the job. The court noted that the job allowed a fairly wide range of education and experience, and held these were fact issues it did not need to decide yet.
The court applied, at the time of this 2017 order, a two-stage approach. At the first stage of collective action certification, the court asked under a lenient standard whether the claims were similar enough to merit court-approved notice. The court described the second stage as similar to Rule 23 class certification, with a deeper look at the merits. Some federal appeals courts have since changed this approach — the Fifth Circuit in Swales v. KLLM Transport Services (2021) and the Sixth Circuit in Clark v. A&L Homecare & Training Center (2023).
This page describes a 2017 court order. The time to join that collective was set by the court in that case. If you have worked in a similar role, the Siegel Law Group can evaluate your own claims.
The collective the court conditionally certified in 2017 included I/DD Care Coordinators who worked for Cardinal in North Carolina within the order’s three-year window. More broadly, are you a care coordinator labeled exempt who works over forty hours a week without overtime? A lawyer can review how you were paid. See overtime rights for care coordinators, or contact the Siegel Law Group for a free consultation.
Related rulings: Ford v. Cardinal Innovations, a later case against the same employer for I/DD Care Coordinators.
Not by itself. A title or degree alone does not prove the learned professional exemption; the worker’s actual main duty matters. In Kirkpatrick v. Cardinal Innovations, the employer pointed to coordinators’ credentials and the education requirements for the job. The court noted the job allowed a fairly wide range of education and experience, and left those fact issues for later.
Not under the standard this court applied in 2017. In Kirkpatrick v. Cardinal Innovations, the court said a plaintiff need not show conclusively at that stage that the employer’s policy is unlawful. It treated much of the employer’s argument as a merits issue and held that the declarations were factual support. Standards now vary by court.
In many courts, yes, though some courts have struck early consent forms that were gained by soliciting workers. In Kirkpatrick v. Cardinal Innovations, the employer asked the court to strike consent forms from coordinators who came forward early. The court refused because there was no evidence counsel solicited them. Filing early can matter because the time limit runs for each worker until that worker’s consent is filed.
For an I/DD care coordinator, the FLSA deadline generally runs two years from each short paycheck, stretching to three for willful violations, per 29 U.S.C. § 255(a). A coordinator who joins a collective action generally stops that clock only when the coordinator’s signed written consent is filed under 29 U.S.C. § 256(b). Each week of delay can push older unpaid weeks outside the recovery period. See the FLSA statute of limitations for overtime claims.
The Siegel Law Group is a national overtime and wage law firm devoted entirely to representing workers denied overtime pay. Where many firms include wage cases as a small part of a broader employment practice, the Siegel Law Group has built its entire practice around overtime litigation — and the results reflect that commitment: $100M+ recovered for workers, 50+ class and collective action certifications, and 100+ federal lawsuits filed in 27+ federal courts nationwide. Founding attorney Jack Siegel is a Bloomberg BNA contributing author on wage and hour law.
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