An Illinois federal judge signed off on a $333,000 settlement between Heights Tower Service Inc. and nearly 60 of its employees, who accused the company of failing to pay them overtime for the time they spent driving between job sites, reported Law360.
The class action lawsuit was filed in 2014. The workers alleged the company would generally pay employees overtime past their normal 40-hour work week, but failed to include their time spent driving between jobs in overtime calculations. That practice violates Illinois’ Minimum Wage Law as well as the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, Law360 reported. The case had been slated for trial to begin this August, but Tuesday’s decision came following mediation.
According to U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert, the deal will fully compensate the workers for the overtime they said they were due, and is an “excellent result” since it “diverts any risk and uncertainty of litigation to certain result for the class.” He added: “They get the dollars now rather than dollars later, although they may not have gotten the dollars later either.”
The payment will occur in two installments; the first within two weeks of Judge Gilbert’s final approval order, compensating every class member claim for $500 or less, and the second will be paid no later than a year after the date the agreement was executed, according to the court documents.
Fish Law Firm attorney David Fish, representing the workers, told Law360 he was “really happy” to have secured the settlement for his clients ahead of a trial. Law firms Mazanec Raskin & Ryder Co. and Foran Glennon Palandech Ponzi & Rudloff represented HTS and its owner, Mark Motter. They had no comment immediately afterwards, according to the account. The case is Jason Pietrzycki v. Heights Tower Service Inc. et al., case number 1:14-cv-06546, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
June 15, 2018
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