What is the standard for determining whether my employer should have known that I was working overtime?
Typically, an employer will be held to “know” what it “could have (or should have) found out” if it was paying attention to the hours its employees were working. The standard typically applied by the courts analyzes whether the employer could have learned of the employee’s activities by making reasonably diligent inquiries. Frankly, it is very unusual for a court to find that an employer did not have the requisite knowledge when the activities in question are a vital or important part of an employee’s job, unless the employee has deliberately hidden the fact that he/she is performing these duties and working those additional hours.
