How much does training cost? A lot less than a lawsuit!
Ever wonder which is less expensive, facing litigation or training your managers in good practices that help your company avoid employee lawsuits? Take a look at some of these recent big money suits against companies. Fair Measures reports only settlements and final judgments - never jury verdicts.
To find out more about our national training programs please call 800-458-2778, email us at training@fairmeasures.com or CLICK HERE.
Posted 08-04-2010
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp has settled a class action suit brought by female sales representatives who alleged they were discriminated against in pay, promotional opportunities, and pregnancy-related matters. The company will pay up to $152.5 million in damages to the sales reps, as well as $40 million to their attorneys, and, over the next three years, will spend another $22.5 million on anti-harassment training and other company programs to eliminate discrimination. The settlement came shortly after a New York City federal jury had awarded the sales reps $3.4 million in compensatory damages plus $250 million in punitive damages. When final, the settlement agreement will replace the jury verdicts.
Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. will pay $12.5 million to settle a lawsuit with the U.S. government alleging that the company failed to test electronic components used in military equipment as well as in outer space. The Northrop engineer who blew the whistle will receive $2.4 million of the settlement funds.
Charter Communications has agreed to pay $18 million to settle an overtime and back pay class action lawsuit brought by 8,000 current and former field technicians.
Posted 07-07-2010
Wal-Mart has agreed to settle yet another class action, this time paying a $4 million to resolve an Oregon wage and hour case.
Les Schwab Tire Centers and a related company have agreed to settle a Seattle sex discrimination case for $2 million. In the suit, the EEOC claimed that Les Schwab had failed to hire qualified women for tire changing jobs at its stores in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah. In addition to the monetary amount, the company agreed to provide anti-discrimination training for all its managers, assistant managers and employees about federal discrimination law.
Shipping giant UPS has agreed to pay $12.8 million to settle a class action lawsuit over the company's misclassification of delivery drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. The drivers claimed they were wrongfully classified as independent contractors rather than regular UPS employees, and as a result, were denied, among other things, minimum wage and overtime payments.
Posted 06-09-2010
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. agreed to pay as much as $86 million to settle a class-action lawsuit claiming it failed to provide vacation and other wages owed to thousands of California employees. About 232,000 former employees in California will share in the settlement, according to court filings.
Mohawk Industries, Inc. has agreed to pay $18 million to settle a racketeering lawsuit brought by employees who alleged that the carpet maker knowingly hired illegal immigrants as part of a scheme to keep wages down. Approximately 48,000 current and former Mohawk employees will share in the settlement. Mohawk, which did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement, also agreed to train employees about employment verification measures required under state and federal law.
Teleperformance USA, a Salt Lake City-based call center which provides over-the-telephone customer service for clients including Sprint Communications, Verizon Wireless and Dell Computers, has paid nearly $2 million in back wages to 15,862 workers for overtime pay violations. The settlement followed a nationwide investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division.
Posted 05-12-2010
The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a judgment against New Jersey gas station chain Raceway Petroleum and its owner, Nicholas Kambitsis, to pay $3.9 million in unpaid overtime wages and liquidated damages to more than 700 former and current employees. The company and Mr. Kambitsis personally must also pay $100,000 in civil money penalties.
A proposed settlement has been reached in a class action suit brought on behalf of more than 750 former employees of Spansion, Inc. who were terminated from the company's Sunnyvale, California and Austin, Texas sites in 2009. The suit claimed the company violated the California and federal WARN Acts by failing to provide employees with adequate advance notice of the layoff. Under the settlement, more than 750 former Spansion employees and their attorneys will receive an estimated $8.6 million global settlement fund.
A former Tennessee Commerce Bank officer will receive more than $1 million in back wages interest, attorney's fees, and other damages, and will return to work after being fired for disclosing the bank's questionable financial practices. OSHA found the bank violated whistleblower protection provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The complaint alleged that the employee was placed on administrative leave in March, 2008 and fired in May, 2008 after raising concerns about internal controls, employee accounts, insider trading and other issues.
Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a federal sexual harassment lawsuit filed on behalf of five women in the public safety department. They claimed that their supervisor's abusive treatment included groping and forcibly kissing them; making lewd comments and gestures regarding sexual activities he wanted to perform on them; displaying or e-mailing pornography and sexually explicit materials; and making other crude sexual remarks. The college will provide annual training for all managers and supervisors and post a notice regarding the settlement.
Posted 04-14-2010
Wal-Mart has agreed to pay more than $11.7 million to settle yet another discrimination suit. According to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a Wal-Mart distribution center denied jobs to female applicants from 1998 through February 2005, regularly hiring male entry-level applicants for warehouse positions, but excluding female applicants who were equally or better qualified.
The U.S. Department of Labor has found Peri Software Solutions Inc in violation of the H-1B provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, uncovering nearly $1.5 million in back wages due to 163 workers. An investigation by the Wage and Hour Division found that the Newark-based company failed to pay the required prevailing wage to workers hired as computer analysts under the H-1B program. Investigators also found the company forced employees to sign employment contracts and then sued them when those contracts were broken. The company was also assessed a civil penalty of $439,000 and faces a potential two-year debarment from the H-1B program.
After more than two years of litigation, Sanofi-Aventis has agreed to pay $15.4 million to settle a class action suit accusing the pharmaceutical company of systemic discrimination against female employees both in pay and promotions. The settlement on behalf of some 4,000 female sales reps employed by the company since May, 2005 includes $8.2 million to pay individual monetary claims, $2 million distributed to class members in the form of base pay adjustments, and $535,000 in service payments to the five named plaintiffs. The preliminary settlement also provides $4.6 million in attorneys' fees.
Posted 03-04-2010
SSM Health Care, owner of seven health care centers and hospitals in the St. Louis area, has paid more than $1.7 million in back wages following a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. Investigators found that employees were not paid when they were required to work through some meal periods, since the company's timekeeping system automatically deducted time for meal periods whether or not the employees were fully relieved of their duties.
Seventeen television networks and production studios, including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Columbia, DreamWorks, Universal and Warner Brothers, as well as several talent agencies, have reached a $70 million settlement in 19 age discrimination cases brought by 165 television writers. The writers alleged that the agencies refused to represent older (40 +) writers and aided and abetted the networks' and studios' systematic failures to hire them. One talent agency, International Creative Management settled in 2008 for approximately $4.5 million, while the lawsuit continued against the rest of the defendants.
Li Jin Yang and Dong Lin, a wife and husband operating five Oriental Forest restaurants in Michigan, have been ordered by a federal court judge to pay $2 million in minimum wage and overtime pay and damages owed to 129 workers following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $11 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of 97,000 current and former workers in Iowa over allegations that they were forced to skip breaks or work off the clock. The lawsuit, filed in 2001, claimed the company failed to compensate workers for off-the-clock work and overtime, altered employee time records and prevented employees from taking lunch and rest breaks.
Posted 02-10-2010
Staples, Inc., has reached a global settlement in several wage and hour class action lawsuits. Under the terms of the global settlement, which is subject to court approval, the office supplies merchant has agreed to drop its appeal of a verdict against it last year in New Jersey and to pay $42 million to resolve claims for damages dating back as far as 2002 and covering more than 5,500 current and former employees.
The U.S. Department of Labor will recover more than $1.8 million in back wages and fringe benefits for more than 500 employees of MT Transportation & Logistics Services, Inc., a New York trucking company. Because of the its labor law violations, the company is losing its contract with the United States Postal Service to haul mail and will be debarred from receiving future government contracts for a three-year period.
Arapahoe Motors, Inc., doing business as Ralph Schomp Automotive, has agreed to pay more than $1.5 million to settle a sex and age discrimination lawsuit filed by the EEOC. "Sexual harassment and sex discrimination against women in traditionally male-dominated industries, such as the auto industry, are still unfortunate realities," said EEOC Acting Chairman Stuart J. Ishimaru. "Likewise, older workers continue to experience age discrimination, despite their experience, productivity and qualifications. Employers should remember that the EEOC is here to find and fight this kind of unlawful mistreatment."
Supermarket chain Albertsons has agreed to pay $8.9 million to settle three Colorado lawsuits in which the EEOC alleged that it had engaged in race, color, and national origin discrimination, as well as retaliation. According to the EEOC, close to 200 employees were subjected to racist and anti-Semitic derogatory epithets, slurs, and graffiti. Allegedly, supervisors were aware of and even participated in the harassing conduct. One African-American employee, whose leg was broken by a piece of equipment at work, was allegedly left lying on the warehouse floor for thirty minutes by a white supervisor who told him that was what he got for being black. Albertsons denied that it had engaged in discrimination or harassment.
Posted 01-12-2010
Outback Steakhouse has agreed to pay $19 million to settle a major class action lawsuit alleging sex discrimination against thousands of women at hundreds of its corporately-owned restaurants nationwide.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $40 million to 87,500 Massachusetts employees who claimed the retailer denied them rest and meals breaks, manipulated time cards and refused to pay overtime. The settlement comes less than three months after the world's largest retailer reached a deal with state prosecutors to pay $3 million to settle complaints that it didn't give its Massachusetts workers proper meal breaks.
A $9.3 million settlement of an overtime pay class action lawsuit against BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. has been reached. The settlement, which is subject to Court approval, is intended to resolve claims that BJ's misclassified certain management employees as exempt from overtime. The employees claim that they were misclassified because their primary responsibilities included hourly duties such as loading and unloading materials, stocking shelves, and other activities which are not exempt under federal and state overtime laws.
An age discrimination class action suit of more than 200 miners against Massey Energy and its subsidiary Spartan Mining Co., was settled for $8.75 million.
