After more than three years of litigation, delivery workers for four Domino’s pizza restaurants in Manhattan are receiving payments for unpaid wages. The payments of nearly $1.3 million began in January and are divided among approximately 60 delivery workers. The case involves a rare situation: while the original lawsuit was against a franchise and individual franchise owners and managers, Domino’s Pizza Inc., the international corporation, was successfully added to the lawsuit in a motion to amend seeking liability of Domino’s as a joint employer. While rare, the case applied well-settled principles of joint employment under wage and hour law to bring in the franchisor.
Cano v. DPNY, Inc. No. 10-cv-07100-ALC-JCF (S.D.N.Y) alleged a range of labor law violations, including time shaving and off-the-clock work, and was originally filed in the Southern District by The Legal Aid Society and Shearman & Sterling as pro bono counsel. The authors were members of the Legal Aid team.
