Lawsuit Claims Pizza Hut Operator Failed to Reimburse Delivery Drivers for Expenses

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A proposed class and collective action alleges the owners of several Pizza Hut restaurants have underpaid delivery drivers by failing to properly reimburse them for job-related expenses.

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The 29-page lawsuit says MP2 Enterprises and two individual owners—which operate Pizza Hut locations throughout Alaska, Arizona, Utah and Nevada—require delivery drivers to use their own vehicles to deliver food to customers. 

According to the case, the defendants have failed to properly estimate and reimburse these employees for the vehicle‐related expenses they incur, including gasoline, vehicle parts and fluids, maintenance and repairs, insurance, depreciation, financing charges, and licensing, registration and storage costs.

The plaintiff, who worked as a delivery driver at the defendants’ Pizza Hut location in Fallon, Nevada in 2022 and 2023, claims the company did not track, record or collect receipts of the actual expenses the workers incurred in the course of operating their own vehicles for the company’s benefit. 

The complaint specifies that the defendants have allegedly failed to reimburse Pizza Hut employees for the miles they drive at the IRS’s standard business mileage rate, or 65.5 cents per mile. The plaintiff claims that this year, she was reimbursed only $0.37 for every mile she drove to make deliveries.

Per the suit, the defendants’ “widespread, repeated, and consistent” underpayment practice has caused delivery drivers’ wages to fall below the federal minimum wage.

“Because Defendants paid their drivers a gross hourly wage at precisely, or at least very close to, the applicable minimum wage, and because the delivery drivers incurred unreimbursed automobile expenses, the delivery drivers ‘kicked back’ to Defendants an amount sufficient to cause minimum wage violations,” the case says, claiming the Pizza Hut owners have run afoul of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and Nevada’s Wage and Hour Law.

The lawsuit looks to represent any current or former delivery drivers employed at the defendants’ Pizza Hut stores within the past four years.

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