Where (1) the defendant, a private company, placed the plaintiff au pairs with host families and (2) the plaintiffs filed a complaint alleging that the defendant violated their rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act and various laws, the defendant is not entitled to the immunity that it claims under Yearsley v. W.A. Ross Construction Company, 309 U.S. 18, 20-22 (1940), as the defendant has not shown that the government “authorized and directed” it to take the actions on which the plaintiff’s claims are based.
A U.S. District Court order denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss is affirmed.
“This appeal concerns Yearsley v. W.A. Ross Construction Company, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that ‘there is no ground for holding [an] agent [of the Government] liable’ for actions ‘authorized and directed’ by the Government and taken ‘under’ Government ‘authority’ that has been ‘validly conferred.’ 309 U.S. 18, 20-22 (1940). The appellant, Cultural Care, Inc. (‘Cultural Care’), a Massachusetts-based company, claims that Yearsley not only protects it from being held liable in the suit that underlies this appeal but also that Yearsley makes it immune from the suit altogether.
“In pressing this contention, Cultural Care takes aim at the District Court for the District of Massachusetts’s order denying its Yearsley-based motion to dismiss the plaintiffs-appellees’ claims against it. Cultural Care contends that, even though the appeal from that order...
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