On April 10, 2020, a $788,368.86 judgment was entered in Jefferson Circuit Court against Louisville Metro for refusing to properly pay a group of Louisville Metro Tow Truck Drivers. All of the plaintiffs in the action Isham, et al, v. Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Govt., were represented by P. Stewart Abney of Abney Law.
The Isham case revolved around a relatively simple issue: In 2007 Louisville Metro Government agreed to pay Abney Law’s clients, all current or former Tow Truck Drivers in Metro’s Towing and Impound Division, double-time for “all hours worked on Sunday,” but the City ultimately refused to honor that agreement. The double-time agreement was memorialized in the Tow Trucker Drivers’ Collective bargaining Agreement with the City and stated:
- For members on a 5-day or 6-day schedule, one and one half (1 ½) times the regular hourly rate (which shall include shift premium if any) shall be paid for all hours worked in excess of eight (8) hours in a day or forty (40) hours in a week. One and one half (1 ½) times the regular hourly rate (which shall include shift premium if any) shall be paid for all hours worked on Saturday. Two (2) times the regular hourly rate (which shall include shift premium if any) shall be paid for all hours worked on a Sunday or a Holiday.
Despite the clear language of the 2007 CBA, Louisville Metro never paid the drivers double time for Sunday work and Louisville Metro never disputed that it failed to pay the drivers. Instead, the city tried to argue that “[t]he double time is only paid for work performed on a Sunday if it is in addition to their regular schedule,” which, on its face, was illogical and contradicted the clear language fo the CBA.
On April 10, 2020, after years of hard-fought litigation, Jefferson Circuit Court, Division One, entered a Final Judgment awarding the Plaintiffs $788,368.86, their full and complete measure of damages. Louisville Metro has appealed the Court’s judgment.
Wage theft is a widespread and serious problem in the United States. For example, in 2013 the Kentucky Labor Cabinet collected $4.4 million in restitution on wage theft cases in 2013, while all robberies in the state in 2013 totaled $2.5 million.((Brady Meixell and Ross Eisenbrey, An Epidemic of Wage Theft Is Costing Workers Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a Year, https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-workers-hundreds/ (accessed April 11, 2020))).