Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC is a law firm with a long history of counseling and defending clients in the hospitality industry in all aspects of labor and employment law and litigation. We possess extensive experience and a deep bench of resources that are necessary to successfully meet the unique and complex challenges of hospitality clients.
The ever-changing legal and regulatory requirements in the hospitality industry pose multi-faceted issues including:
- Wage and Hour Disputes
The most frequently filed class actions in the New York federal courts are for alleged wage and hour law violations. We have wealth of experience defending restaurants, clubs and other hospitality clients against class and collective action lawsuits for alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and analogous state and local laws. Even smaller employers can be subject to these types of lawsuits. We represent them all – small, medium and large.
An individual employee may bring a wage and hour lawsuit and allege modest damages, but when a claim is scaled up as a class or collective action, the potential damages can increase exponentially since these claims are often brought by a group of employees for damages over the span of six years (the applicable statute of limitations under New York’s wage and hour law). The incentive for employees to sue is also encouraged by the ability of successful employees to recoup their attorneys’ fees and availability of liquidated damages (double the amount wrongfully withheld wages owed). We successfully litigate and resolve these cases on a regular basis.
- Misclassification/Overtime
Employers are required to classify their employees as either “exempt” or “non-exempt” from the overtime laws. Misclassification can reverberate into serious consequences. Many of these lawsuits in this area involve an employer’s failure to pay overtime to employees it has allegedly misclassified as exempt from the receipt of overtime pay.
We work with employers to ensure proper classification of employees to avoid such claims. One tool for doing so is providing clients with an exempt classification audit to determine if certain classes of employees are correctly classified as exempt. If employees are correctly classified as exempt, then they are not entitled to overtime and litigation can often be avoided.
- Tipping Disputes
Employers in certain industries (e.g., restaurants, hospitality, car wash, and other personal services) are frequently targets for tip violation litigation. The regulations related to tipping are sometimes unclear. We counsel employers to ensure their ongoing compliance with the tipping laws and defend them in litigation claiming violations of these laws.
- Americans with Disabilities Act Compliance and Defense
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects individuals with disabilities by requiring that companies provide equal access to public accommodations such as restaurants, bars, and retail stores. While the actual damages in most Title III ADA cases are small, the ADA permits the award of attorneys’ fees, which has caused the exponential filing of ADA accessibility lawsuits in recent years.
Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against businesses for alleged violation of Title III’s requirements relating to equal access to property (e.g., wheelchair ramp entrances, bathrooms and seating), company website accessibility, failure to provide Braille gift cards, and access to drive-thru service to name a few. We keep our clients up to date with the latest trends in ADA III class action litigation and we regularly handle litigation defense relating to ADA accessibility.
- Employment Discrimination/Harassment
We handle these claims for restaurants, bars, and other hospitality clients on a daily basis both in court and before the various federal, state, and local anti-discrimination agencies such as the EEOC, the NYS Division on Human Rights, and the NYC Commission on Human Rights.
- Other Laws Related to Employment in the Hospitality Industry
We regularly advise employers respecting compliance with and defense of claims relating to spread of hours, predictive scheduling, meal and rest periods, leaves of absence, uniform requirements, and the New York Wage Theft Prevention Act.
- Unions and Labor Organizing
Our attorneys provide a full range of counseling and defense of claims related to union organizing, alleged unfair labor practices, picketing, strikes, and contract negotiations.