This case asserted unpaid wage claims on behalf of delivery drivers employed at Jimmy John’s locations in the Dayton, Ohio area.
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Biller & Kimble filed this lawsuit on behalf of Jimmy John’s delivery drivers who worked for the seven Jimmy John’s locations in the Dayton, Ohio area between April 12, 2015 to February 24, 2020.
The lawsuit is similar to many of the other lawsuits our firm has filed on behalf of pizza delivery drivers. The plaintiff claimed that the defendants violated the law in three different ways.
First, the plaintiff claimed that the drivers were not adequately reimbursed for the costs associated with using their own vehicles to perform work for Jimmy John’s. For some of the relevant time period, the plaintiffs claimed that the drivers were not reimbursed at all for their vehicle expenses.
At some point in 2017, the plaintiff claimed that the company began to give some reimbursement payments, but that those reimbursement payments (roughly $.30 per mile) were not enough to cover the drivers’ vehicle costs.
Our firm has successfully argued in a number of cases that employers have two choices when reimbursing for vehicle expenses: they can either (1) keep records of the drivers’ actual expenses and reimburse for them, or (2) reimburse at the IRS standard business mileage rate, which changes every year and is currently $.56 per mile.
Learn more about the drivers’ “under-reimbursement” claim here: https://www.billerkimble.com/pizza-delivery-drivers/.
Second, the plaintiff claimed that the drivers were paid a “tipped wage rate” (less than minimum wage) for hours they worked inside the restaurant. Because the drivers were not receiving tips when they worked inside the store, the plaintiff claimed that it was illegal for the company to pay them a tipped wage rate for these hours. This is commonly called a “dual jobs” claim.
Third, the plaintiff claimed that the company avoided paying overtime hours to the drivers by paying them on multiple separate paychecks issued by different legal entities that made up part of their Jimmy John’s operation. For example, if a driver worked 45 hours in a week, XYZ Corp. paid the driver for 40 hours and ABC Corp. paid the driver for 5 hours so that neither entity paid overtime at time-and-a-half the driver’s regular rate.
In February 2020, the parties reached an agreement to settle all of the claims raised in the case for $1 million.
The Court granted final approval of this settlement on November 5, 2020.
The settlement agreement creates a $1 million settlement fund to be distributed in three separate payments: 25% is to be distributed in December 2020, 25% is to be distributed in June 2021, and the remaining 50% is to be distributed on or before October 15, 2021.
Class members, please make sure your address is current with our office.
If we do not have the right address for you, you might not receive your share of the settlement.
The third round of settlement payments are set to be distributed to the delivery drivers in a little over a month from now, on October 15, 2021. If you are a class member, you should have already received two rounds of payment, one in December 2020 and the other in June 2021.
We understand from the defendants, however, that some of the settlement funds already distributed have not been cashed by the class members who received them.