Kathleen Bray

Under Federal law, and most state laws, an employee may work an excess of 8 hours in a day without incurring overtime, so long as they do not work more than 40 hours a week. The California rule, however, requires that an employer pay overtime if an employee works more than 8 hours in a day. In a recent case, the California Supreme Court ruled that employers who send their employees on business travel to California must consider that they may be incurring an overtime liability if their employees work more than 8 hours in a day. As the case at hand involved a California based company with employees who regularly worked in Colorado and Arizona, its application in general is somewhat in question because of the fact that the employer was California based. Sullivan v. Oracle Corp. (Cal. Sup. Ct. 2011)