Tara Osborn v. JAB MANAGEMENT SERVICES , INC., doing business as ADVANCED CORRECTIONAL HEALTHCARE ,…

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 24-1573
T ARA OSBORN,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
JAB MANAGEMENT SERVICES , INC., doing business as
A DVANCED C ORRECTIONAL HEALTHCARE , INC.,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Central District of Illinois.
No. 1:22-cv-01049-MMM-JEH — Michael M. Mihm, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED OCTOBER 28, 2024 — D ECIDED J ANUARY 22, 2025
____________________
Before R OVNER , BRENNAN, and K OLAR , Circuit Judges.
BRENNAN, Circuit Judge. JAB Management Services, Inc.,
an organization that hires employees to provide prison
healthcare, terminated Tara Osborn, a technical support spe-
cialist and longtime employee. She then sued her former em-
ployer, asserting violations of state and federal employment
law. Relevant to this appeal, Osborn alleged that JAB Man-
agement failed to compensate her for working overtime as

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2 No. 24-1573
required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The employer
moved for summary judgment on Osborn’s claim, which the
district court granted. We affirm.
I
A
Before turning to the facts of this case, we begin with a
word on procedure. Osborn filed her claim in the Central Dis-
trict of Illinois. That court’s local rules include various
requirements that govern how parties file and respond to mo-
tions for summary judgment. CDIL–L.R. 7.1(D). For example,
a party opposing summary judgment must “list by number
each fact from” the movant’s summary judgment motion that
is undisputed and material, disputed and material, disputed
and immaterial, and undisputed and immaterial. Id. at
7.1(D)(2)(b)(1)–(4). When the nonmovant disputes a fact, it
must support its response with “evidentiary documentation.”
Id. at 7.1(D)(2)(b)(2)–(3). These requirements coincide with
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c), which, among other
things, requires a party opposing summary judgment to ad-
dress the moving party’s assertion of facts.
Rule 56 provides district courts with the authority to take
appropriate measures when a party “fails to properly address
another party’s assertion of fact,” including giving the non-
compliant party another “opportunity to properly … address
the fact” or “consider[ing] the fact undisputed for purposes of
the motion.” FED. R. C IV. P. 56(e)(1)–(2). Consistent with the
Federal Rules, in the Central District of Illinois, a nonmovant’s
“failure to respond to any numbered fact” in the movant’s
motion for summary judgment is “deemed an admission of
the fact.” CDIL–L.R. 7.1(D)(2)(b)(6).

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No. 24-1573 3
JAB Management moved for summary judgment on Os-
born’s overtime pay claim. Osborn responded, but the district
court determined that she failed to comply with the local rules
as just described. In its discretion, the court permitted Osborn
to amend her response to correct the deficiencies. Osborn filed
an amended response. But she again failed to comply. More
specifically, her amended response did not “list by number
each fact from” JAB Management’s summary judgment mo-
tion. CDIL–L.R. 7.1(D)(2)(b). Instead, Osborn developed her
own list of facts and responded to those. As a result, the dis-
trict court could not determine to which of JAB Management’s
facts Osborn’s individual responses corresponded.
The court struck Osborn’s amended response after her sec-
ond failure to comply with the rules. See FED. R. C IV. P. 56(e)(4)
(district courts may “issue any other appropriate order” when
parties fail to comply with the summary judgment rules). As
a result, Osborn was deemed not to have responded to JAB
Management’s undisputed material facts. So, under the local
rules, those facts were considered admitted. CDIL–L.R.
7.1(D)(2)(b)(6). But because courts view facts in the light most
favorable to the nonmoving party at summary judgment, Wal-
ters v. Pro. Lab. Grp., LLC, 120 F.4th 546, 548 (7th Cir. 2024), the
district court decided it would still consider the additional
material facts Osborn offered in her response insofar as the
evidentiary record supported them.
On appeal, Osborn concedes the district court did not
abuse its discretion in enforcing the local rules. We therefore
proceed on the same record. See Waldridge v. Am. Hoechst
Corp., 24 F.3d 918, 922 (7th Cir. 1994) (explaining this court’s
willingness to strictly enforce local rules).

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4 No. 24-1573
B
Advanced Correctional Healthcare (ACH) contracts with
localities to provide inmates with medical care. JAB Manage-
ment is a wholly owned subsidiary of ACH responsible for
hiring employees to work for some of ACH’s other subsidiar-
ies, including Advanced Inmate Medical Management. Ad-
vanced Inmate Medical manages ACH’s electronic medical
records system—a system that healthcare personnel rely on to
track the provision of inmate care.
JAB Management hired Osborn as an administrative assis-
tant in 2009. She was promoted several times, and, as a result,
began to work more with Advanced Inmate Medical’s records
system. Among her new responsibilities were troubleshoot-
ing software issues and overseeing a database that tracked the
system’s quality. By 2016, Osborn was promoted to technical
support specialist. In that role, she started providing on-call
support to ACH customers, including on issues related to the
records system.
JAB Management designated the technical support spe-
cialist position as salaried. As a result, Osborn says she could
not enter time outside of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. into her
employer’s timekeeping system. The position was also desig-
nated as remote. According to one of her supervisors, alt-
hough typical business hours were 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.,
Osborn’s remote position offered her the flexibility to design
her own schedule. Osborn did not keep track of any time she
worked over forty hours. But she claims she worked an aver-
age of ten hours per day and fifteen hours of overtime per
week. Osborn says she regularly had to work outside of nor-
mal business hours to take support calls, respond to emails,
drive to client sites, and “patch servers.” She also submits that

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No. 24-1573 5
she worked Saturdays and Sundays, though the extent of that
work depended on the weekend.
Toward the end of Osborn’s employment with JAB Man-
agement, her supervisors became increasingly dissatisfied
with her ability to communicate and manage her workload.
According to one supervisor, Osborn failed to explain what
she was working on throughout the day, yet she complained
about having too much to do. Some of Osborn’s tasks were
reassigned to her coworkers. And she received coaching.
Nonetheless, she continued to have trouble finishing her
work. Osborn was terminated on August 2, 2021.
Following her termination, Osborn sued JAB Manage-
ment. She alleged, among other things, that her employer
failed to pay her overtime in violation of the FLSA. JAB
Management moved for summary judgment on the claim.
Although the company designated Osborn’s position as sala-
ried, it agreed for purposes of its motion to treat her as a non-
exempt employee eligible for overtime pay. JAB Management
also did not dispute Osborn’s contention that, assuming it vi-
olated the FLSA, it did so willfully, and, as a result, a three-
year statute of limitations applied. 29 U.S.C. § 255.
Accordingly, the district court analyzed whether Osborn
produced sufficient evidence to show JAB Management failed
to pay her overtime at any point between February 23, 2019
(three years before she sued) and August 2, 2021 (the day she
was terminated). The court invoked the standard of proof that
applies to overtime pay cases in which an employer fails to
maintain accurate time records. It held that Osborn failed to
“prove by a just and reasonable inference the amount and ex-
tent of work she performed during the relevant time period.”

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6 No. 24-1573
II
The FLSA guarantees non-exempt employees time-and-a-
half pay for any work performed in a week over forty hours.
29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1); Helix Energy Sols. Grp., Inc. v. Hewitt, 598
U.S. 39, 44 (2023). An employee who claims she has not been
fully compensated by her employer “bears the burden of
proving that she performed overtime work.” Brown v. Fam.
Dollar Stores of Ind., LP, 534 F.3d 593, 594 (7th Cir. 2008). Once
she carries that initial burden of showing a violation of the
FLSA, the employee “must [also] establish damages.” Id. at
595. Assuming an employer has complied with its duties un-
der the FLSA to keep accurate time records, 29 U.S.C. § 211(c),
the employee should be able to do so with little difficulty.
Brown, 534 F.3d at 595. She can simply point to her employer’s
records to show the extent of her unpaid overtime. Anderson
v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 687 (1946), superseded
on other grounds by Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C.
§§ 251–62.
But establishing damages proves more challenging when
an employer has failed to keep time records or when those
records are inaccurate. Indeed, “[e]mployees seldom keep
such records themselves,” making it difficult to show “the
precise extent of uncompensated work.” Id. The Supreme
Court has long recognized that an employee should not be
“penalize[d]” for her employer’s failure to comply with the
FLSA’s recordkeeping requirements. Id. So, in circumstances
where an employee has established a violation of the FLSA
but cannot rely on her employer’s records to prove her dam-
ages with perfect precision, a relaxed burden of proof applies.
Id. The employee need only “produce[] sufficient evidence to
show the amount and extent of [her] work as a matter of just

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No. 24-1573 7
and reasonable inference.” Id. “The burden then would shift
to the employer to produce evidence of the precise amount of
work performed or to negate the reasonableness of the infer-
ence to be drawn from the employee’s evidence.” Brown, 534
F.3d at 595 (citing Anderson, 328 U.S. at 687–88).
We pause to clarify a point lost thus far in this litigation.
The just and reasonable inference standard “applies to
damages questions only after an employee has met the initial
burden to ‘establish[] liability’ by showing that the employee
performed uncompensated overtime work.” Viet v. Le, 951
F.3d 818, 822 (6th Cir. 2020) (alteration in original) (quoting
O’Brien v. Ed Donnelly Enters., Inc., 575 F.3d 567, 603 (6th Cir.
2009)); see also Carmody v. Kansas City Bd. of Police Comm’rs, 713
F.3d 401, 406 (8th Cir. 2013). The standard does not apply to
the employee’s threshold burden of proving a violation of the
FLSA. On that question—“whether the plaintiff worked over-
time at all”—the typical burden of proof applies. Viet, 951 F.3d
at 822. At summary judgment, that means Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 56 governs. See Melton v. Tippecanoe County,
838 F.3d 814, 819 (7th Cir. 2016) (“FLSA plaintiffs are still
bound to the requirements of Rule 56.”). Under Rule 56, an
employee “must show what evidence [she] has that would
convince a trier of fact to” agree that her employer violated
the FLSA. See Diadenko v. Folino, 741 F.3d 751, 757–58 (7th Cir.
2013) (quoting Springer v. Durflinger, 518 F.3d 479, 484 (7th Cir.
2008)). If the employee can overcome summary judgment by
showing there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to
whether she worked uncompensated overtime, FED. R. C IV. P.
56(a), then the damages question becomes relevant. And so
too does the just and reasonable inference standard.

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8 No. 24-1573
The Supreme Court’s decision in Anderson confirms that
the relaxed burden of proof applies only to the damages issue.
There, the Court first announced the just and reasonable in-
ference standard. Anderson, 328 U.S. at 687. After doing so, it
responded to a concern that the new standard might “be con-
demned by the rule that precludes the recovery of uncertain
and speculative damages.” Id. at 688. The Court did not think
so. The employees claimed to work forty hours per week be-
fore counting time spent walking to their workstations and
preparing for their shifts. Id. at 683–84; see also Tyson Foods,
Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442, 475 (2016) (Thomas, J., dissent-
ing) (examining the record in Anderson). But the Court held
that the employer was required to compensate its employees
for those preliminary activities. Anderson, 328 U.S. at 690–93
(overruled by 29 U.S.C. §§ 252, 254). So, accounting for that
additional time, the employees necessarily worked more than
forty hours per week. “The damages [were] therefore cer-
tain.” Id. at 688. And the uncertainty was limited to “the
amount of damages arising from the statutory violation.” Id.
It was “enough under [those] circumstances” for the employ-
ees to prove “the extent of the damages” by a just and reason-
able inference. Id.
We acknowledge that some of our prior opinions can be
read as conflating liability and damages by applying the re-
laxed standard of proof to both issues. See Melton, 838 F.3d at
817–20 (invoking the just and reasonable inference standard
to conclude the district court correctly found that the plaintiff
failed “to establish a FLSA violation”). At other times, though,
this court has adhered more closely to Anderson, explaining
that the just and reasonable inference standard is limited to
the damages question. For instance, in Brown we said that
“[t]he Anderson test addresses whether there is a reasonable

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No. 24-1573 9
basis to calculate damages, and assumes that a violation of the
FLSA ha[s] been shown.” 534 F.3d at 596. There, the employee
“raise[d] a genuine issue of fact as to whether she was not
properly paid overtime in violation of the FLSA” and thus sat-
isfied her threshold burden under the Rule 56 standard. Id. at
596–97. Only then did the court examine whether the em-
ployee was able to prove her damages by a just and reasona-
ble inference. Id. at 597 (“[T]he remaining question is whether
th[e] Anderson standard is met.”). We take this opportunity to
clarify that the approach we took in Brown is more consistent
with Anderson, and it is the approach courts in our circuit
should follow going forward.
With the appropriate standards of proof in place, we ana-
lyze first whether Osborn has come forward with sufficient
evidence to survive summary judgment on the question of
JAB Management’s liability.
III
The district court ruled that Osborn could not carry her
initial burden of showing a violation of the FLSA, finding she
“failed to prove the amount and extent of her work, let alone
work in excess of forty hours a week, as a matter of just and rea-
sonable inference.” (emphasis added). We review that deci-
sion de novo. Est. of Biegert ex rel. Biegert v. Molitor, 968 F.3d
693, 698 (7th Cir. 2020). As explained, the just and reasonable
inference standard does not apply to the threshold liability
issue—an issue that remains contested because JAB Manage-
ment has not admitted that it required Osborn to work over-
time. We therefore proceed, as courts must, by analyzing this
question under the ordinary Rule 56 standard.

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10 No. 24-1573
A
A court “shall grant summary judgment if the movant
shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact
and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
FED. R. C IV. P. 56(a). If “the nonmoving party will bear the
burden of proof at trial,” that party must “designate specific
facts showing that there is a genuine” dispute such that the
court should allow her claim to proceed. Celotex Corp. v.
Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 324 (1986) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
“Where the record taken as a whole could not lead a ra-
tional trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no
genuine issue for trial.” Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 586
(2009) (quoting Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp.,
475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986)). In other words, the nonmovant must
come forward with enough evidence to place her “version of
events” beyond the level of mere “speculation or conjecture.”
Molitor, 968 F.3d at 701 (quoting King v. Hendricks Cnty.
Comm’rs, 954 F.3d 981, 986 (7th Cir. 2020)). Conclusory evi-
dence offered without a factual foundation is insufficient. Viet,
951 F.3d at 823 (citing Lujan v. Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n, 497 U.S. 871,
888–89 (1990)); see also Turner v. The Saloon, Ltd., 595 F.3d 679,
690–91 (7th Cir. 2010). And although we construe the record
facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, “our
favor … does not extend to drawing inferences that are sup-
ported by only speculation or conjecture.” Argyropoulos v. City
of Alton, 539 F.3d 724, 732 (7th Cir. 2008) (internal alterations
and quotations omitted).
B
We assess whether Osborn has come forward with suffi-
cient, non-conclusory evidence that would allow a rational

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No. 24-1573 11
trier of fact to conclude that she worked uncompensated over-
time.
The Sixth Circuit’s decision in Viet v. Le is instructive. Like
Osborn, the employee there, Quoc Viet, accused his employer
of violating the FLSA by failing to pay him time-and-a-half
for overtime. Viet, 951 F.3d at 821. He worked for a copier re-
sale company and claimed to work sixty hours per week. Id.
at 820. Viet set his own schedule, and when asked during a
deposition to describe his typical routine, “[h]e offered no es-
timate of his daily hours.” Id. at 824–25. The employee could
only supply vague and sometimes inconsistent descriptions
of the time he spent on various tasks. Id. at 825. He did not
provide a straight answer on “the time required for his du-
ties,” nor did he come forward with evidence “show[ing] how
often he did them.” Id.
The Sixth Circuit held that Viet failed to “create a genuine
dispute of material fact under Rule 56” as to whether he
logged more than forty hours per week. Id. at 824. The court
explained that employees cannot rely on vague and conclu-
sory allegations about their schedules to overcome summary
judgment on FLSA overtime pay claims. Id. at 824 (citing
Turner, 595 F.3d at 690–91). While employees need not de-
scribe their schedules “with perfect accuracy,” they should be
able to offer “testimony coherently describ[ing]” their typical
workweeks. Id. (quoting Moran v. Al Basit LLC, 788 F.3d 201,
205 (6th Cir. 2015)). Viet could not do so. His claim could only
“withstand summary judgment,” the court reasoned, “if [it]
adopted a legal rule that conclusory estimates about an em-
ployee’s average workweek allow a rational jury to conclude
that the employee worked overtime.” Id. at 825. Understand-
ably, the Sixth Circuit was unwilling to fashion such a rule.

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12 No. 24-1573
Based on the record before us—one complicated by Os-
born’s failures to comply with the local rules—this case
proves highly analogous to Viet. To start, Osborn’s job de-
scription indicated her position “operate[d] in a remote office
setting.” The description also listed her hours as 8:00 a.m. to
5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Yet, by failing to respond
to JAB Management’s statement of undisputed material facts,
Osborn admitted that, like Viet, she was free to design her
own schedule.
So, what did Osborn’s typical schedule look like? She al-
leged she worked an average of fifteen hours per week of
overtime. But her evidence lacks the specificity required for a
reasonable jury to understand how she reached that figure. At
her deposition, Osborn was asked to explain how she calcu-
lated her overtime estimate. She said: “I figure I work at least
ten hours a day and on the weekends, it was pretty easy to
come up with that, a norm.” When pressed on what she did
for ten hours a day, her response—much like Viet’s descrip-
tion of his job duties—was vague. She answered: “Customer
issues, the database, the reports, it is very labor intensive.”
Absent from the record is any accounting of how long it took
Osborn to complete those “labor intensive” tasks or how often
she engaged in them throughout the workweek. As to the
number of hours she spent working weekends, all Osborn
could say was that sometimes she worked a couple of hours
and sometimes she worked all day. Osborn claims several of
her former coworkers could testify regarding the number of
hours she worked in a week. But, as the district court
observed, she failed to offer their sworn testimony. Simply
identifying the individuals does little to support Osborn’s
contention that she worked more than forty hours per week.
As in Viet, the evidence in this record proves too vague and

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No. 24-1573 13
conclusory for a rational trier of fact to agree Osborn worked
uncompensated overtime.1
In addition to lacking specificity, Osborn’s evidence of her
schedule is inconsistent. Consider, for example, her duty to
deal with customer issues. Osborn claims JAB Management
was understaffed and that she was the sole employee respon-
sible for providing on-call customer support from February
2020 to August 2021. But she also admitted that the number of
calls she fielded substantially declined in April 2020 thanks to
improvements made to ACH’s electronic medical records sys-
tem. One would expect Osborn’s alleged overtime to have de-
clined as well. Yet, she says she worked ten hours per day and
fifteen hours of overtime per week across the entire period at
issue.
Consider also her database-related duties. Osborn admit-
ted in her deposition that her time working on databases was
largely cabined to the final year and a half of her employment.
When asked what she did for ten hours per day before start-
ing on the databases, Osborn responded vaguely: “Trying to
1 Recall that the relevant time period here is from February 23, 2019,
to August 2, 2021. Osborn believes she began working remotely (and thus
had the flexibility to build her own schedule) approximately a year or a
year and a half before she signed an official offer of remote work on Feb-
ruary 23, 2021. That would mean she worked in-office for some portion of
the relevant period.
Ultimately, though, that does not alter our decision that Osborn has
failed to prove she worked uncompensated overtime, as she has not come
forward with sufficient evidence of her typical schedule in-office or out. If
anything, that Osborn cannot affirmatively say when she began working
remotely lends more credence to our conclusion that her evidence lacks
the minimal level of specificity necessary to overcome summary judg-
ment.

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14 No. 24-1573
work on different tests, and different ways to make the data
full, and just all kinds of things.”
Because Osborn’s evidence of her daily schedule lacks
specificity and suffers from inconsistencies, we are left to
speculate as to how many hours she worked per week. A jury
would be left guessing too. Speculation will not do. Argy-
ropoulos, 539 F.3d at 737; see also Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., 475
U.S. at 586 (1986) (A nonmovant must “do more than simply
show that there is some metaphysical doubt as to the material
facts” of her case). Osborn was under no obligation to rebuild
her schedule with precision. But the evidence she has pro-
duced fails to provide us with even a general sense of her typ-
ical workweek.
If this claim survived summary judgment, then any FLSA
claim in which the employee vaguely describes her schedule
as having exceeded forty hours per week would reach a jury.
Indeed, the record before us—though viewed in the light
most favorable to Osborn—is undoubtedly skewed toward
JAB Management based on Osborn’s failures to comply with
the local rules. As demonstrated here, failing to abide by the
local rules has real consequences. See Waldridge, 24 F.3d at 922.
Osborn has not carried her initial burden of showing she
worked unpaid overtime at all. JAB Management is thus enti-
tled to summary judgment.
IV
Absent a genuine issue of material fact on the threshold
question of whether JAB Management violated the FLSA, we
need not reach the damages issue. The district court con-
cluded, however, that Osborn could not prove the amount
and extent of her damages by a just and reasonable inference.

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No. 24-1573 15
And the parties focused their briefing on that issue. So, as-
suming for the sake of argument that Osborn successfully “es-
tablishe[d] a violation of the FLSA,” Brown, 534 F.3d at 595,
we next consider whether she “produce[d] sufficient evidence
to show the amount and extent of [her overtime] work as a
matter of just and reasonable inference.” Anderson, 328 U.S. at
687. Once again, our review of the district court’s decision is
de novo. Molitor, 968 F.3d at 698.
A
Under the FLSA, employers are responsible for keeping
accurate employee time records. 29 U.S.C. § 211(c). When an
employee lodges a claim against her employer for failing to
pay overtime, she can seek those records to prove the amount
of unpaid time. Anderson, 328 U.S. at 687. As explained, the
Supreme Court has “recognized that where an employer
failed to keep the proper and accurate records required by the
FLSA, the employer rather than the employee should bear the
consequences of that failure.” Brown, 534 F.3d at 595. In those
circumstances, the employee need only prove her damages by
a just and reasonable inference, rather than demonstrate the
“precise extent of uncompensated work.” Anderson, 328 U.S.
at 687.
The just and reasonable inference standard is a relaxed
one. We have said, for instance, that an employee can prove
damages by relying on her own recollection. Melton, 838 F.3d
at 819; see also Mazurek v. Metalcraft of Mayville, Inc., 110 F.4th
938, 943 (7th Cir. 2024) (explaining that “an employee’s time
can be reconstructed from memory”). The employee can also
approximate the extent of her overtime “from the particulars
of the jobs [she] did.” Espenscheid v. DirectSat USA, LLC, 705
F.3d 770, 775 (7th Cir. 2013). And she can point to “‘triggering

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16 No. 24-1573
factors’ that would … signal[] extended work hours.” Brown,
534 F.3d at 597.
The burden of proof may be relaxed, but it remains a
burden nonetheless. To overcome summary judgment, an
employee must at least have “a reasonably reliable story.”
Melton, 838 F.3d at 819. She cannot, for example, prove the
amount and extent of her uncompensated overtime based on
“unsupported ipse dixit.” Id. (quoting Turner, 595 F.3d at 690).
Nor can her version of events be “so ‘internally inconsistent
or implausible on its face’ that ‘no reasonable person would
believe it.’” Id. (quoting Seshadri v. Kasraian, 130 F.3d 798, 802
(7th Cir. 1997)).
B
JAB Management designated Osborn’s position as sala-
ried. As a result, Osborn says she was not permitted to log any
hours worked outside of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. into JAB Man-
agement’s timekeeping system. Necessarily, then, those rec-
ords were inaccurate, and the just and reasonable inference
standard applies. Anderson, 328 U.S. at 687. JAB Management
does not contest this point. The only disagreement is whether
Osborn produced enough evidence to overcome the relaxed
burden of proof. She has not.
Melton helps explain why. There, we held that, although
an employee may rely on his own recollection to satisfy the
just and reasonable inference standard, he still must offer “a
reasonably reliable” version of events to overcome summary
judgment. 838 F.3d at 819. The employee in that case claimed
he worked through his lunches without receiving compensa-
tion in violation of the FLSA. Id. at 817. As evidence of the
extent of his overtime, he offered a spreadsheet of his hours
worked. Id. “The source of information for the spreadsheet

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No. 24-1573 17
was his own memory.” Id. at 819. While this did not pose an
issue, the court nonetheless concluded that the spreadsheet
failed to establish the employee’s damages by a just and
reasonable inference. That was because other evidence in the
record severely undermined the document’s veracity. Id. at
819–20. As the court explained, an employee bears the burden
of offering more than ipse dixit and “internally inconsistent
or implausible” evidence to satisfy even the relaxed damages
standard of proof. Id. at 819 (quoting Seshadri, 130 F.3d at 802).
The employee in Melton ultimately fell short.
Based on the record before us, Osborn cannot satisfy the
just and reasonable inference standard elucidated in Melton.
For one, she relies on her own vague, self-serving testimony
to prove the extent of her damages. Osborn says she regularly
worked ten hours a day, on weekends, and fifteen hours per
week in overtime. As already discussed, though, her asser-
tions lack factual specificity. Bare assertions fail to move an
employee’s overtime claim from implausible to reasonably
believable. See Melton, 838 F.3d at 819.
For another, much of Osborn’s proffered evidence lacks
internal consistency or is otherwise “flatly refuted.” Id. (quot-
ing Turner, 595 F.3d at 690). Again, she says she was the only
employee to provide clients with on-call support for approxi-
mately seventeen months. To her, this helps prove the amount
and extent of her damages. Yet, she admitted that within
months of becoming the only employee to provide support,
the number of calls fell off dramatically. She says part of her
ten-hour days were spent working on databases. That work,
though, began only toward the end of her employment. And,
she says, she worked at least fifteen hours of overtime weekly.
But Osborn failed to respond to JAB Management’s evidence

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18 No. 24-1573
showing her supervisors reduced her workload by reassign-
ing tasks to other employees.
The Eighth Circuit’s decision in Holaway v. Stratasys, 771
F.3d 1057 (8th Cir. 2014), further supports this analysis. Like
Osborn, the employee in Holaway—a field service engineer—
sought “damages based on his approximation he worked 60
hours per week every week of his employment.” Id. at 1058.
He reached the overtime calculation “based on … recollec-
tions of his daily activities.” Id. (internal alterations and
quotations omitted). Those activities included time spent pre-
paring for his job duties, driving to client sites, and working
on administrative tasks over the weekends. Id. Applying the
just and reasonable inference standard, the Eighth Circuit
concluded the employee failed to sufficiently prove his dam-
ages. Id. at 1059. According to the court, all he “put forth
[were] contradictory and bare assertions of his overtime
hours.” Id. Indeed, he “provided only vague testimony and
failed to reference specific days and hours worked.” Id. at
1060. A jury would not have been able to determine the
amount and extent of the employee’s overtime absent more
specific evidence. Id.2
Osborn’s claim fails for the same reasons. She has offered
vague and unsupported assertions about working ten hours
per day and over the weekends. While she has identified sev-
eral “time-consuming duties” she was responsible for—in-
cluding taking calls, developing reports, and working on
2 We do not understand Holaway to require—nor should our opinion
be read to require—that a plaintiff identify specific dates or times when
she worked overtime, so long as she otherwise offers enough information
about her routine to support a just and reasonable inference as to the ex-
tent of her uncompensated overtime.

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No. 24-1573 19
databases—she has not provided details as to how long those
duties took or how often she did them. Her evidence would
not permit a jury to infer the amount of overtime she worked
during the relevant time period. Osborn has thus failed to
meet even the low burden of proving her damages by a just
and reasonable inference.
Osborn raises two arguments to the contrary that merit
discussion. First, she says the district court improperly relied
on Holaway, which she submits imposes a more demanding
burden of proof on employees and thus conflicts with Seventh
Circuit precedent.
Her contention is incorrect. Holaway stands for the propo-
sition that an employee cannot overcome even the relaxed just
and reasonable inference standard based on a bare assertion
of working more than forty hours per week. 771 F.3d at 1059.
That is entirely consistent with this court’s precedent. Again,
in Melton, we laid down a similar rule, explaining that a plain-
tiff may not “survive summary judgment where his recollec-
tion is ‘flatly refuted’ by other evidence in the record.” 838
F.3d at 819 (quoting Turner, 595 F.3d at 690). Nor may a plain-
tiff overcome summary judgment when his version of events
is inconsistent or facially unbelievable. Id. The district court
relied on Holaway for the same reason we do: It is factually
analogous to this case. Because Holaway does not conflict with
our precedent, that was not an error.
Second, Osborn argues she has identified several trigger-
ing factors that signal the extent of her overtime work. This
court first discussed triggering factors in Brown, 534 F.3d at
597. A triggering factor is evidence an employee identifies as
“signal[ing] extended work hours.” Id. at 597. The employee
in Brown, for example, pointed out that she was the sole

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20 No. 24-1573
individual with a key to open and close a Family Dollar store.
Id. at 596. If the employee was not present for opening and
closing shifts, the store would not have been able to operate.
So, the evidence served as a triggering factor that helped
show she worked an additional one to two hours both before
and after the time she logged during the store’s normal busi-
ness hours. Id. at 596–98. In other words, because the evidence
helped prove the employee was present to open and close the
store, it “provide[d] a basis for inferring the extra hours
worked.” Id. at 597 (citing Allen v. Bd. of Pub. Educ. for Bibb
Cnty., 495 F.3d 1306, 1317 (11th Cir. 2007)).
According to Osborn, emails and calls she responded to
outside of normal business hours, tasks she completed at odd
times, and travel she engaged in all serve as triggering factors
that prove her overtime by a just and reasonable inference.
But these proposed triggering factors are not as helpful as
Osborn hopes, as they fail to establish “an approximation as
to … [her] unpaid compensation.” Brown, 534 F.3d at 598.
Osborn points to emails she sent outside of normal busi-
ness hours. The district court was correct that these emails do
not establish the amount of work she had to put in to send
them. Nor do we know whether composing the emails consti-
tuted overtime because Osborn has not offered evidence of
what other work she performed during the weeks she sent
them. Osborn’s testimony that she took calls outside of busi-
ness hours suffers from the same deficits.
For her next triggering factor, Osborn directs us to certain
duties she completed at odd hours—including server patches,
which she says needed to be done at night. According to Os-
born, she patched servers monthly for at least three hours. To
her credit, she at least described how long this task took. But

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No. 24-1573 21
it remains unclear what other work she accomplished on the
days and weeks she conducted the patches. Contrast that with
Brown where the employee showed she was necessarily at the
store for opening and closing shifts in addition to normal op-
erating hours. 534 F.3d at 597–98. That provided the court
with an approximation of her unpaid overtime hours, id., in a
way Osborn’s evidence of conducting patches does not.
Osborn further argues that an email purporting to show
she spent ten hours driving to a jail on one occasion serves as
a triggering factor. Putting aside that this is the only instance
of extended travel she offered, the proposed triggering factor
misses the mark for the same reason as the last. The record is
silent on what other work she completed that week, so the
ten-hour drive does not allow for an estimate of her damages.
In the end, not one of Osborn’s proposed triggering factors
would allow a trier of fact to approximate the extent of her
overtime, even by a just and reasonable inference.
Finally, because Osborn has failed to show the amount
and extent of her damages by a just and reasonable inference,
we need not consider whether JAB Management came “for-
ward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed
or with evidence to negative the reasonableness of the infer-
ence to be drawn from the employee’s evidence” under the
Anderson burden-shifting framework. 328 U.S. at 687–88.
V
In an overtime pay case like this one, an employee bears
the burden to prove a violation of the FLSA. To survive sum-
mary judgment, the employee must show there is a genuine
issue of material fact as to whether she worked overtime at
all. Osborn has failed to overcome that initial burden. Even if

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22 No. 24-1573
she had, the burden remained with Osborn to prove her dam-
ages by a just and reasonable inference. Based on the record
before us, she cannot clear that hurdle either. The district
court’s decision granting JAB Management’s motion for sum-
mary judgment is therefore A FFIRMED.

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