Posts Tagged ‘ California Overtime ’
Week Adjourned: 6.17.11
June 17th, 2011. By LucyC
Top Class Actions
Logistical Error? Nothing like a lawsuit to improve your company’s standing—or attract quality employees—as FTDI West is about to find out. The company, located in California and Florida, got hit with an unpaid overtime class action lawsuit this week.
The gist of the lawsuit is labor code violations, well, that’s a no-brainer. Specifically, the lawsuit states that FTDI West Inc, violated: Sections 226.7 and 512 of the California Labor Code by failing to provide adequate meal breaks to employees involved, section 226.7 of the California Labor Code by failing to provide adequate rest breaks to employees involved, Section 510 of the California Labor Code by failing to pay proper overtime wages, Sections 203 and 226 (a) of the California Labor code by providing involved employees paystubs not in compliance with California law and not paying “waiting time” penalties, as well as two other causes of action as related to Business and Professions Code Section 17200 and the common law tort of unjust enrichment.
The overtime claims asserted deal with non-payment of “double time” wages. Double time wages are due for any work over 12 hours in a workday or any work beyond eight hours on any seventh consecutive day of a workweek.
The lawsuit defines its class members as “All current and former employees of Defendants who were employed as non-exempt employees at any of Defendants’ locations anywhere in California, at any time from four years prior to the initiation of this action until the present.”
Top Settlements
Drywall Might Settle but the Dust Surely Hasn’t… Remember all the defective Chinese drywall lawsuits of not so very long ago? Well, they are slowly making their way through the courts to settlement land. Case in point—Banner Supply has agreed a $54.4 million settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by homeowners in the Orlando, FL area. In fact, the agreement covers 2,000 to 3,000 homes south of Orlando.
According to Builderonline something like 95 companies have been implicated as distributors of the sulfur-tainted drywall and named in subsequent lawsuits filed against the Chinese manufacturers. The defendants are accused of being the source of tainted drywall. While Banner Supply tops the list, others suppliers reportedly include ProSales L&W Supply, ProBuild, Stock Building Supply, and 84 Lumber.
While $54.5 million might seem a large settlement, it may only work out to between $18,000 and $24,000 per home, and estimates suggest the cost of repairing the affected properties could reach $100,000.
Defective Boat Injury leads to $31M Award. Ok. There’s bad design, and BAD DESIGN. In this case, I’m not talking about an infraction of the Home & Garden variety, but rather something that warranted a $31 million award. Two women brought a defective product and personal liability lawsuit against MasterCraft, after suffering some pretty horrendous injuries that good design likely would have prevented.
Short version, in 2006 Nichollette Bell and Bethany Wallenburg were among 12 passengers riding in a MasterCraft X-45 wakeboarding craft. They were sitting on the bow of the boat when it was suddenly submerged as the driver of the boat went to retrieve a fallen wakeboarder. As a result the women were swept off the boat by the force of water and into the lake. The boat’s propeller struck Bell on the head, ripping out an eye and leaving her with brain damage. The propeller also slashed Wallenburg’s left elbow and lower back, resulting in muscle and nerve damage. In their lawsuit, the women alleged the boat was defectively designed. They also alleged the driver handled the boat negligently. Not surprisingly, the jury found MasterCraft 80 percent at fault and the driver 20 percent at fault.
OK. That’s it for this week. See you at the Bar.
Week Adjourned: 5.14.10
May 14th, 2010. By LucyC
This week it’s all about bad employers and bad drugs…bad, bad, bad!
Top Class Actions
Whole New Meaning to Visitation Rights. A massive, nationwide class action lawsuit was filed this week by employees of one the largest healthcare service providers in the country—Gentiva Health Services, Inc. The employees are claiming the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Apparently, Gentiva—which incidentally employs some 30,000 health care workers—treats visiting nurses and other health care providers as exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA and refuses to pay these employees for all hours worked. Sound familiar?
Instead, Gentiva pays nurses and other health care providers on a “per visit” basis for some work, an hourly rate for other work, and fails to pay anything at all for other hours worked. Plaintiffs allege that Gentiva’s rather creative take on employee compensation doesn’t quite meet the requirements of state or federal wage and hour law.
The lawsuit, if approved, seeks to represent all current and former Gentiva employees, including registered nurses, therapists, and other health care providers who are or were not paid for all hours worked.
You know these guys may end up rivalling Wal-Mart….
Top Settlements
Movin’ from Price to Wage Rollbacks? (Again?) Speaking of the devil…(I feel a rant coming on)… Read the rest of this entry »
Study says LA surpasses NYC, Chicago in Wage Theft
March 8th, 2010. By AbiK
Every so often there’s a little news story out there that doesn’t get as much attention as it perhaps should. Take a story by Max Taves at LAWeekly.com not long ago. The headline: Unscrupulous Employers Skim $26.2 Million. Ok, surprise, surprise. But the real headline hits you when you read the subhead: That’s per week, from lower-income Angeleno’s paychecks.
$26.2 million per week? Rack that one up on an annual basis and now you’re talking over $1 billion in alleged wage theft.
Taves’ article (2/18/10) is based on a study co-authored by UCLA sociologist, Ruth Milkman, and Victor Narro. The 69-page study, Wage Theft and Workplace Violations in Los Angeles, concludes that 17% of LA county’s poorest workers are basically ripped off to the tune of $26.2 million each week—money they never see in their paychecks. Money that they should see in the form of minimum wage pay, overtime pay for time-and-a-half overtime worked, and rest and meal breaks. The reason, the authors argue, is that employers in LA county “know there’s no enforcement.”
What’s interesting in this study—aside from the sheer numbers involved—is that when the authors compared LA to those in NYC or Chicago, they found that LA low-wage workers were more likely to be Read the rest of this entry »
California Overtime at the Car Wash: Are Inspection Numbers for Real?
November 2nd, 2009. By AbiK
By now you’ve read the news about the California Labor Commissioner imposing close to $1 million in fines after a statewide investigation of the California carwash industry.
The investigation went as follows:
42 investigators
did
230 car wash inspections
netting
141 citations
for
103 car wash businesses
The citations issued total $916,711.
Ok, great. There’s some progress. But here’s the part I’m having a hard time swallowing (as reported at Reuters; the bold is mine)…
Investigators found 49 businesses that failed to provide workers’ compensation coverage for their employees. Citations issued totaled $240,000 and businesses without workers’ compensation Read the rest of this entry »
A Fair and Just Legal System Also Needs Moderation
October 9th, 2009. By Hunter West
Important as it is for citizens to have legal recourse to sue in order to right a wrong, do you sometimes wonder if things are getting a bit out of hand?
Case in point: in 2002 a detective with the New York Police Department (NYPD) accidentally shot himself in the knees while sitting on a chair and trying to holster his revolver. The following year he retired on a three-quarters disability pension and is now employed as a court officer in South Carolina making $24,000 annually.
He also sued the City of New York and last November was awarded $4.5 million in damages by a jury.
For accidentally shooting himself in the knee. For that kind money maybe we should all do that.
Obviously, the former NYPD man found himself a talented lawyer who presumably argued that the revolver, issued by the department, was faulty. As the NYPD is an agent of the City, the Big Apple would be on the hook.
Keep in mind that if we are injured, or victimized in concert with a situation or event through no fault of our own, we should have the right to seek compensation.
Case in point: the scores of women who have unknowingly put themselves in harm’s way by simply subscribing to Yaz birth control. They believed Yaz (and Yasmin) to be a safe and effective oral contraceptive, only to find out the hard way about risks for life-threatening blood clots and thrombosis. Women—painfully young, healthy women—have died.
And then there are the thousands of California workers who are robbed of their right to claim, Read the rest of this entry »
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