Wage and Hour Lawsuit Filed in NY Against Prestige Lawns

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

Rockland, New York, landscaping company Prestige Lawns, Inc. and its CEO are the defendants in a proposed collective action. The plaintiff, who worked as a landscaper for Prestige from sometime in 2000 through June 2017, alleges he was unlawfully misclassified as a “manager” from 2013 through the end of his employment and is thusly owed unpaid wages.

The plaintiff says that throughout his tenure he was required to work in excess of 40 hours per week from March to October each year. According to the case, the plaintiff was paid his regular hourly rate for hours worked past 40 each week, and not the mandatory time-and-a-half overtime rate. In 2013, under the guise that he was receiving a “promotion,” the suit continues, the plaintiff was misclassified as a managerial employee and thereby exempted from federal and state overtime protections despite his job duties remaining the same. 

During his time as a “manager,” the plaintiff put in between 60 and 80 hours of work every week, the lawsuit says, without receiving commensurate pay:

“In exchange for his work as a manager from Summer 2013 until the end of the Relevant Period, [the defendants] paid [the plaintiff] $265 by personal check and $320 in cash each week, for a total of $585 per week, which was intended to and did in fact cover only the first forty hours that [the plaintiff] worked each week, and thus yields a regular hourly rate of $14.63. 

While working as a manager, [the defendants] did not pay [the plaintiff] at any rate of pay for any hours that [the plaintiff] worked in a week in excess of forty, let alone at his legally-mandated overtime rate of $21.94.”