Eva Mies V. Sephora

Eva Mies filed a class action lawsuit against her former employer Sephora. Mies accused Sephora of not paying over time and not compensating for missed meal times, this was because the company considered their Specialists exempt from the labor laws, due to their position in the company. Within a Sephora store there are many different positions that vary in importance. At the top is the Director who oversees everything in the store, essentially a general manager. Then it is the Specialists (which was Mies position), there are about four to five in each store. There duty is to oversee and help “Cast Members” (sales associates), and “Leads” (lead consultants, floor leads, or sales leads). Specialists can be overseeing anywhere between ten to fifteen

This all resulted in inaccurate wage statements to these employees. Mies first goal was to form enough evidence to start a class action lawsuit against Sephora. She gave examples of how Sephora runs its stores through an online program, giving multiple tasks to Specialists that are not in the original job description formed in nineteen ninety-nine. She also used evidence of an in-store survey taken in two thousand, ten which focused on how directors, leads, and specialists in Sephora stores spend non-selling time. The survey found leadership employees generally spent the same percentage of time performing non-selling tasks regardless of their store’s sales volume. This survey was done by a statistical specialists who was hired by Sephora at the time to conduct the study, but this was opposed by Sephora in Mies case. Along with this, a Sephora District Manager, Kelly Guerriero stated that company policies do not declare everything a specialist does. She explained that a specialist must have good judgment in difficult situations, and each specialist 's task vary greatly depending on the size, location, and Director of each store. Both Mies and

If an extensive set of questions is required, then the treatment of employees (Specialists in this case) varied too much to form a true class action lawsuit. The Appellate court also stated that the case seemed to focus less on how to classify tasks, and company policies and instead more on the different tasks that each specialist performed; which did not pertain to a class action lawsuit. Mies then faulted the court on not considering that in order for a Specialist to be exempt they must regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment. She then again faulted the court for not considering whether every specialist could not, and did not perform this independent work because of policies put in place by Sephora that govern all aspects of the store. The trial court explained that the resolution of this issue would have to focus less on Sephora’s policies and more on the individual Specialists declarations. The trial court also looked through Sephora’s policy and decided it was very detailed, but the tasks of Specialists still varied extremely from store to store. The court was not wrong in denying Mies a class action lawsuit because her proposal was undeveloped and