Los Angeles, CA: An unpaid wages class action lawsuit involving more than 11,000 current and former hourly-paid Verizon California Inc. employees has been certified against Verizon. R. Rex Parris Law Firm filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Verizon employees in April 2010, claiming wage statements excluded information required by California labor laws, which prevented employees from determining if they had been paid properly -- for example, pay period dates, hourly rates, and number of hours worked.
Plaintiffs' attorney, Alexander R. Wheeler of the R. Rex Parris Law Firm, said: "These wage statements were so fundamentally flawed that even Verizon's own witness couldn't figure them out . . . We put a wage statement in front of the witness Verizon put up as the face of the company, asking him 'if you were this employee, how much time did you work, did you get paid overtime, what was your overtime rate,' . . . and that person couldn't answer our questions." Mr. Wheeler also said that the potential for damages in this case could reach as high as nine figures, stating "now that the class is certified, the rest is a math problem, and we're going to ask the court to take out its calculator and solve it."
The case is Hector Banda et al. v. Verizon California Inc., case number BC434587, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles. Plaintiffs are represented by The R. Rex Parris Law Firm and Jackson Hanson LLP.
