Seven banquet waiters are suing a Tarrytown hotel and its banquet and food service managers, claiming the servers had been underpaid wages and gratuities for as long as seven years.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in White Plains, alleges the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Tarrytown and its general manager, Richard Friedman, food and beverage manager David Ribbens and two banquet managers, Norma Abdou and Nurul Haque, failed to pay the banquet servers overtime and tips, even though the plaintiffs regularly worked more than 40 hours per week and banquet customers were billed for service fees.
“What we”™re saying is the employer had practices in place over a long period of time that deprived our clients of the minimum wage and overtime wages they were entitled to,” said Jack Malley, a partner at Yonkers law firm Smith, Buss & Jacobs LLP, which is representing the banquet servers in the suit. “In addition, they were not paid tips and gratuities they were entitled to, either.”
According to the 25-page complaint, the seven plaintiffs, Carlos Ocampo, Igor Morozov, Jorge Villanueva, Amaury Ortiz, Plinio Retana, Manuel Calderon and Sutee Monchaitanapat, worked more than 40 hours a week, sometimes more than 60, but were paid for 40 hours each week regardless of how many hours they actually worked. They thus were denied overtime pay they were due, according to the complaint.
The seven plaintiffs also claim that, according to New York labor law, the hotel failed to provide receipts for pooled gratuities collected from customers and a formula for how pooled gratuities would be distributed. Additionally, the plaintiffs allege the hotel was collecting an 11 percent “service charge,” which the plaintiffs claim under New York law must be paid to the servers unless the hotel told customers that it would not be.
Since the suit was filed under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, it is an “opt-in” collective action, meaning current or former employees of the DoubleTree in Tarrytown wishing to file a claim in the case will be able to, provided that the court certifies there is a group of individuals with similar claims.
Reached by phone, Friedman, the general manager of the hotel, declined to comment on the lawsuit and on whether he had an attorney representing him. None of the defendants had an attorney appear in the case on their behalf as of press time.
As well as naming the hotel and the four managers as defendants, the suit also lists DoubleTree Hotel Systems Inc. and DoubleTree Franchise LLC, the franchisors of the DoubleTree hotel chain.
A voicemail left on a media relations hotline for Hilton Worldwide, the parent company of DoubleTree Franchise LLC, was not returned.
The case, styled Ocampo et al v. 455 Hospitality LLC et al, is number 7:14-vc-09614 and is assigned to Judge Kenneth M. Karas.
