Industry News
The back-and-forth between lawyers continues as attorneys for the Vail Resorts’ employees alleging the company “systematically fails to pay its hourly employees for all hours worked” and repeatedly violates federal and state labor laws in California, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin claim the proposed class-action lawsuit should proceed not only in Colorado, but in the eight other states where the company operates.
Colorado residents Randy Dean Quint and John Linn, and California resident Mark Molina filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Colorado on December 3rd and seek class-action status. The men, who worked at Beaver Creek, CO, list traveling on company buses to and from employee parking lots, the time spent putting on company uniforms and equipment, and job training as examples of unpaid “off the clock” time for employees such as instructors, lift scanners and lift operators. They estimate damages to all affected current and former employees will exceed $100 million.
“Vail Resorts has exploited plaintiffs and thousands of other seasonal employees in violation of federal and state labor laws for years, and these egregious practices continue to the present. This action seeks to hold Vail Resorts responsible for its misconduct, fairly compensate plaintiffs and other similarly situated current and former Vail Resorts employees for damages preliminarily estimated to total more than $100 million.”
– states the lawsuit
In its response, filed on February 26th, 2021, Vail did not dispute the allegations, instead filed a partial motion to dismiss the lawsuit in all states except where the employees worked, Colorado.
“By their own allegations, plaintiffs never worked in those states, and have not established they were otherwise subject to the laws of those states. As several cases from this district hold, plaintiffs have no injury under the laws of those states and lack standing to assert claims under those laws on behalf of themselves or a putative class … plaintiffs lack standing to allege such out-of-state violations, and these claims should be dismissed.”
Twelve additional individuals have filed “Consent Forms,” expressing their desire to participate in this action.
Quint alone alleges he is owed $8,363 in unpaid wages plus $17,178 in unpaid overtime. He claims he was usually paid for 30 to 50 hours a week but often worked a dozen or more hours unpaid.
Vail Resorts has until April 23, 2021, to reply again in support of its motion for a partial dismissal of the lawsuit’s claims in the other eight states.
A year ago Apple lost a similar class-action lawsuit brought by its employees disgruntled with having to go through security checks that could take 10-20 minutes after they had clocked off. The unpaid time claimed by the plaintiffs cost Apple as much as $60 million across 12,400 former and current employees.
