Florida Lawsuits Allege Improprieties against Burger King, Franchisees

Lake County, FLA former worker at a Burger King restaurant in Lake County has taken his former employer to court alleging violations to Florida Employment and other labor statutes under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), alleging his former employer altered time cards in order to avoid paying overtime.

According to court documents, Matthew Hall clocked about 55 hours of time per week at the Burger King Restaurant at which he worked. Under Florida Labor Law and other FLSA statutes, such hours would qualify him for about 15 hours of overtime, given that he worked beyond the standard stipend of 40 hours as normally observed as a standard workweek.

However, in his Florida Labor lawsuit Hall alleges that he and fellow employees under similar circumstances were never paid overtime. Hall alleges in his lawsuit that the defendant “altered plaintiff’s time records and those of all other employees similarly situated so that they usually reflected no more than 40 hours per week,” the complaint says.

“By reason of the said intentional, willful and unlawful acts of defendant, plaintiff and all others similarly situated have suffered damages plus incurring costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees,” the complaint says. Hall is seeking damages of about $19,000.

Hall’s employer, and the defendant in his putative class action, is Magic Burgers LLC, an enterprise operating no fewer than 100 Burger King locations in Central Florida.

It should be noted there are other Florida lawsuits against Burger King. Burger King Corp., owner of the Burger King brand and the parent company to franchisees including Magic Burger LLC, is currently involved in an overtime wage lawsuit in Florida federal court. In June a Florida federal judge certified with conditions two classes of employees who accuse the fast-food juggernaut of improperly classifying coaches as exempt from overtime pay in an effort to save on labor costs.

In that putative class action, plaintiff Torres Roman alleges that Burger King intentionally and repeatedly violated the FLSA by denying overtime benefits to trainee coaches and to sales, profit and operation coaches. Roman, who filed his lawsuit in February, claims that Burger King improperly classified coaches as exempt from overtime in spite of the fact they did not perform supervisory or administrative duties and were mostly doing menial tasks such as flipping burgers, operating cash registers, cleaning bathrooms and greeting customers.

In early June US District Chief Judge K. Michael Moore gave the proposed class action his conditional blessing: “Upon weighing the relevant factors and considering the information presented, the court finds that plaintiff has met his burden in showing a reasonable basis to support his claim that there are other similarly situated employees,” Judge Moore said.

The case is Torres Roman v. Burger King Corp., Case No. 1:15-cv-20455, in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

The Hall lawsuit is Matthew Hall v. Magic Burgers LLC, Case No 5:15-cv-00382, in the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida.