Plaintiff Amanda High, who worked for Helia from October 2022 until March 2025, alleges that Helia automatically deducted thirty minutes per day from employees' recorded hours even when those employees did not take thirty-minute breaks and were not paid for that time. She also alleges that Helia failed to pay proper overtime rates and that bonuses paid to hourly employees were not factored into the regular rate of pay for overtime calculations. Helia operates skilled nursing facilities in Illinois and Missouri.
High brings claims on behalf of herself and similarly situated workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Illinois Minimum Wage Law, and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act.
Judge Jeremy C. Daniel denied the motion in a brief order dated March 13, 2026. The ruling turned less on any close legal question than on the deficiencies in Helia's own filing. Rather than challenging the legal sufficiency of High's allegations, Helia's two-page motion — filed under Rules 12(b)(6), 12(b)(7), and 12(c) — simply asserted that it never employed High and never made the deductions she described. Those are factual denials that carry no weight at the pleading stage; as the court explained, the veracity of a plaintiff's allegations is not at issue on a motion to dismiss, and Helia made no effort to contest the sufficiency of High's allegations.
Helia also attached documents to its motion — including a purported pay stub, an email between counsel, and a company memo on its timekeeping policy for lunch breaks — but the court declined to consider them. Because those materials were not referenced in the complaint, they fell outside the narrow exception permitting consideration of extrinsic documents at the dismissal stage. The court also exercised its discretion to deny Helia's implicit request to convert the motion into one for summary judgment.
On Helia's Rule 12(b)(7) failure-to-join argument, the court noted that dismissal on that ground required Helia to establish the requirements of Rule 19 — an argument Helia made no effort to develop.
Helia must answer the complaint by April 3, 2026. A scheduling conference is set for April 23, 2026.