In July, a Washington federal judge approved a $4.4 million class and collective action settlement on behalf of hospital workers who claim their employers were deducting their pay for meal breaks they did not take. In addition to the sum, U.S. District Judge Mary K. Gray also awardedalmost $1.2million in legal fees to represent the two plaintiffs’law firms that represented workers.
Washington Hospital $4.4M Wage Settlement
Class counsel, Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP, and local counsel Terrell Marshall Law Group, received 27 percent of the total settlement. There are 1,650 people in the class; each person got approximately $2000on average. Besides the state law claim allowed under RCW 49.52, et seq., accruing in the Washington class is a similar action under theFederal Labor Standards Act brought by 300workers.
The lawsuit was brought in April2019by Myla Kurtz, a registered nurse who had been employed for nearly nine years at the Trios Southridge Hospital. They alleges that their employers including RCCHTrios Health LLC and Lourdes Hospital LLC, regularly docked 30 minutes’ pay, for every meal breakrequired of them to staff up.
