Florence, et al. v. Jose Pepper’s Restaurants, LLC & Edward J. Gieselman

United States District Court for the District of Kansas, 2:20-cv-2339 Filed:
July 7, 2020

Our office along with Boulware Law, LLC filed a collective class action claim on behalf of hourly servers working at Jose Pepper’s thirteen restaurants located in the Kansas City metropolitan area. A collective class action claim for overtime pay was brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and a class action claim under Missouri’s wage laws for locations in the state of Missouri. The lawsuit alleges that defendant Jose Pepper’s and its owner required these employees to:

(1) Defendants required Plaintiff and other similarly situated employees to be present
at work and perform work, but did not allow them to clock in until they begin
serving their first customer, and were therefore, denied appropriate compensation
for work performed;
(2) Defendants allowed Plaintiff and other similarly situated employees to work
overtime if they did not clock in, which Plaintiff refused to do. Other similarly
situated employees who did not clock in were, therefore, denied appropriate
compensation for work performed;
(3) Defendants removed overtime hours that were reported by Plaintiff and other
similarly situated employees from Defendants’ time keeping system and were,
therefore, denied appropriate compensation for work performed; and
(4) Defendants requested that Plaintiff and other similarly situated employees report
overtime hours worked as regular hours under another employee’s name, which
Plaintiff refused to do. Other similarly situated employees who clocked in under
other employees’ names were, therefore, denied appropriate compensation for
work performed.

It seeks overtime pay on behalf of these employees who worked there within the past three years. It also seeks liquidated damages in an amount equal to the overtime pay owed.

For a copy of the Complaint filed against the Defendant: click here.