› $580,975,000 verdict in consumer fraud case
Pharmaceutical drug manufacturer Novartis must pay $3.3 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages for systemically discriminating against thousands of female employees, a federal jury in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has opened the door for millions of women who claim retail discount giant Wal-Mart discriminated against female employees. A class-action lawsuit originally filed in 2001 claims the retailer paid its female employees less than male employees doing the same job, and gave fewer promotions to women employees. The class-action could involve more than 1 million women.
A federal appeals court dealt Wal-Mart a huge blow today when it ruled that the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history may proceed as a class action. The lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2001 by a group of six female Wal-Mart employees, could potentially affect more than 1.5 million women throughout the country, a 2001 estimate found.
Three former Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company employees who filed a $200-million class-action lawsuit against the company claim they were deprived of minimum wages and overtime pay. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Diego, alleging Northwest Mutual misclassified them and hundreds of other employees as independent contractors to save money.
A Nashville car wash company has reached a settlement with three employees who claim they weren’t paid for several hours of work. The minimum-wage employees sued Shur-Brite Hi Speed Car Wash, alleging the company’s owners clocked them in and out throughout the day, depending on how busy their work shifts were. The agreed settlement for $130,000 will be distributed among 120 employees, who, like the plaintiffs, weren’t being paid for hours spent on the job.
If a group of Brazilian workers is believed, some U.S. companies are still practicing a form of indentured servitude. According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. Distrcit Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, a group of Brazilian welders and pipefitters came to the U.S. as temporary H-2B guest workers for American recruiters that provide workers for shipyards. According to the suit, the workers came to this country “on promises of consistent, well compensated work at a reputable shipyard through a regulated U.S. government program.”
If you’re a wage worker and your employer is violating the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by paying you less than minimum wage, denying you overtime, or misclassifying you as a manager or independent contractor, don’t go running to the Department of Labor (DOL) for help anytime soon. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) is incompetent. What’s worse, the latest report, released on March 29, represents the third time in less than a year that the GAO has found the Wage and Hour Division’s performance a failure when it came to enforcing FLSA regulations and helping the people it was designed to serve.
An attorney representing a healthcare worker who is suing his employer for denied overtime says that lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act may become more common during the economic recession. The plaintiff alleges that his employer, Delta-T Group and Delta-T Group Social Service Staffing, Inc. denied him overtime compensation by wrongly classifying him as an independent contractor. Because he is not appropriately classified as an employee of the company, the plaintiff cannot receive the same benefits that regular employees of the company received.
A lawsuit filed by employees against Buffalo Rock Co. of Birmingham, Alabama has been certified as a class action lawsuit, according to a report in the Birmingham News. Workers filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Birmingham in 2007, alleging the company’s failure to compensate some of its sales and delivery employees for overtime work.
A group of poker dealers in Palm Beach, Florida won a lawsuit in federal court this week filed against the Palm Beach Kennel Club Entertainment Complex for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The workers alleged that managers of the club skimmed money off their tips to pay supervisors working the card room floor. According to the Palm Beach Post, the club failed to prove to the jury that it operated a legal tip pool under the FLSA regulations.
