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Bennett & Belfort Attorneys Win Jury Trial on Overtime Claims

By October 11, 2019 No Comments

 

On October 4, a Suffolk County jury awarded three restaurant workers $114,498 in unpaid overtime compensation. The jury’s verdict followed a seven-day trial in which B&B attorneys, Michaela May and Craig Levey, represented the Thai kitchen workers.

Each of the Plaintiffs routinely worked six or seven days per week, usually for much more than 40 hours per week, for the Defendant, the Rice Barn restaurant in Needham. Rice Barn failed to pay them the “time and a half” required by the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Rice Barn’s problematic record keeping practices required each plaintiff and some of their former co-workers to reconstruct their hours worked and wages paid through memory. Ultimately, the jury found the plaintiffs and their co-workers credible and awarded each of the three plaintiffs between $27,000 and $46,000 in overtime pay.

Previously, a judge of the Superior Court found that Rice Barn’s failure to timely pay overtime compensation was also a violation of the Massachusetts Wage Act and that, therefore, the Plaintiffs would be entitled to treble damages under that law. Attorneys May and Levey anticipate requesting statutory trebling of the jury’s verdict and an award of attorneys’ fees and costs shortly.

The case is Devaney et al v. Zucchini Gold, LLC, et al (C.A. No. 15-2839).