On August 4, 2026, a federal court in San Antonio denied Carvajal Pharmacy's motion to force its delivery drivers' unpaid overtime claims into private arbitration. The case is Thomas v. Carvajal Pharmacy LTC LLC, No. 5:26-cv-00395-JKP-ESC, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. Josef F. Buenker of The Buenker Law Firm and I represent the drivers, and I serve as attorney-in-charge. You can read more about the case on our case page and read the order denying the motion (PDF).

What the drivers allege

The drivers delivered prescription medications and other pharmacy products to homes, care facilities, and airports. They allege that Carvajal Pharmacy classified them as independent contractors, controlled their routes, their pay rates, and their schedules the way an employer controls employees, and paid no overtime for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek. The lawsuit seeks back overtime wages, an equal additional amount as liquidated damages, and attorney's fees.

The arbitration motion

The drivers signed their contracts with Integrity Couriers, a separate courier company. They signed nothing with Carvajal Pharmacy. After we filed suit, Carvajal Pharmacy asked the court to enforce the arbitration clause inside the Integrity Couriers contracts and move the case out of federal court.

A company that never signed a contract ordinarily cannot enforce it. Carvajal Pharmacy relied on a Texas doctrine called intertwined claims estoppel, which lets a non-signatory enforce an arbitration agreement in narrow circumstances.

What the court held

United States Magistrate Judge Elizabeth S. Chestney denied the motion and gave two separate reasons. Either one on its own defeated the motion.

First, the court found no close relationship between Carvajal Pharmacy and Integrity Couriers. Integrity Couriers keeps its own separate corporate identity, the two companies answer to no common control and hold no corporate affiliation, and they deal with each other as independent participants in a business transaction. Texas law requires more than a working relationship before a company can enforce a contract it never signed.

Second, the court found that the drivers' overtime claims do not depend on the Integrity Couriers contracts at all. The right to overtime comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act and attaches to the employer directly. The drivers could bring the same claims if the contracts had never existed.

We wrote about the law behind this ruling in more detail in an earlier post, The Arbitration Clause You Signed With a Staffing Company.

What happens next

Carvajal Pharmacy filed its answer on August 18, 2026. The same day, it filed an objection asking the district judge, Judge Jason K. Pulliam, to set aside the magistrate judge's order. We filed our response in opposition on August 25, 2026, and the objection now awaits the district judge's ruling. The magistrate judge entered the order as a non-dispositive order on referral, which is why the district judge reviews it. If the order stands, the case moves toward an initial pretrial conference and discovery.

If you delivered for Carvajal Pharmacy

We filed this case as a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which means other drivers who were paid the same way can join it. You may have a claim if you delivered for Carvajal Pharmacy, if you were paid per stop or on a 1099 rather than as an hourly employee, and if you worked more than 40 hours in a week without overtime pay.

The law lets you reach back two years from the day you join the case, or three years if the violation was willful. That window moves forward with the calendar. Every day you wait, another day of unpaid overtime falls off the far end of what you can recover, and you cannot get it back.

If you drove for Carvajal Pharmacy or for Integrity Couriers and you believe you were denied overtime, call me at (512) 799-2048 or use the contact form on this site. Consultations are confidential and there is no charge for the initial consultation.