August 10, 2009
Chelsea, MA
About 70 strippers who worked at a Chelsea, MA club can each seek thousands of dollars in damages in a class-action lawsuit because their employer misclassified them as ”independent contractors,” depriving them of wages and tips.
The suit, which a lawyer for one of the strippers described as the first of its kind in Massachusetts, seeks to recover money they say they should have received at King Arthur’s Lounge in Chelsea since 2004.
The club was the scene of a notorious shooting in January 2008 that left one man dead and two men wounded.
King Arthur’s Lounge did not pay the strippers any salaries, required each to pony up a $35 fee to perform each night, and kept $10 of every $30 that each made for ”private dancing” in video-monitored booths, according to a state judge who granted a stripper’s motion for summary judgment on the issue of liability.
The club had argued that selling alcohol is its main business, not putting on strip shows, and that the performers were independent contractors who provided extra entertainment akin to televisions and pool tables at a sports bar.
Suffolk Superior Judge Frances A. McIntyre dismissed that argument.
“A court would need to be blind to human instinct to decide that live nude entertainment was equivalent to the wallpaper of routinely-televised matches, games, tournaments, and sports talk in such a place,” she wrote. ”The dancing is an integral part of King Arthur’s business.”
McIntrye classified the suit brought by Lucienne Chaves, a 32-year-old former stripper at the club, as a class action on behalf of her and other dancers who were wrongly treated as independent contractors, said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston lawyer for the strippers.
About 70 other strippers who worked there can seek to be part of the class as the case proceeds to a trial for damages.
Boston Globe Staff
author: Jonathan Saltzman
original article
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For more information please contact:
Shannon Liss-Riordan
Lichten & Liss-Riordan, P.C.
100 Cambridge Street, 20th Floor
Boston, Massachusetts 02114
tel 617-994-5800 fax 617-994-5801
Independent Contractor Misclassification Lichten & Liss-Riordan, P.C.
We are representing groups of employees who allege they have been misclassified as independent contractors. When companies misclassify their workers as independent contractors, these employees are often deprived of many benefits including overtime pay, health insurance, employer-sponsored retirement plans, and expense reimbursements. Misclassified employees also do not receive unemployment and workers’ compensation benefits to which they are entitled. Companies that misclassify employees as independent contractors save these significant costs and also do not pay the employers’ share of employment taxes.
In the first case of its kind in Massachusetts, we have obtained a court ruling that strippers were misclassified as independent contractors. The judge certified the case as a class action and ruled that the dancers were illegally deprived of wages and tips due to their misclassification.
http://www.llrlaw.com/ca_icm.htm
http://www.llrlaw.com/pdfs/king_arthur_decision.pdf
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