From Courthouse News Service, Alanna Madden reports on a proposed settlement of misclassification claims by exotic dancers in San Francisco and San Diego. Alanna writes:
(CN) — A federal judge has signed off on a $6.5 million settlement in a wage-and-hour dispute between exotic dancers and strip clubs in San Francisco and San Diego.
A class of 8,402 exotic dancers sued SFBSC Management in San Francisco and Déjà Vu Services in San Diego in 2014 for allegedly misclassifying them as independent contractors and engaging in unlawful tip sharing.
According to this week’s settlement order, the parties reached a $5 million settlement in 2017 which the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded in 2019, citing several inadequacies in equity to former dancers and scrutiny of settlement terms. Since then, similar lawsuits have been filed in Northern California and another resulting in a $6.44 million settlement with Déjà Vu Consulting in Michigan.
Thereafter, the parties reached a global settlement in the San Francisco and San Diego cases, consolidating the cases for settlement purposes and approving the settlement preliminarily.
Overall, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler found the $6.5 million settlement to be fair and reasonable, as it recovers about 14% of the “claimed best-case damages scenario of $45.8 million” and accounts for the amount of work performed and wages received by settlement class members.
Read the full story at $6.5 million wage settlement OK’d for exotic dancers in California | Courthouse News Service
