Lawsuit: Landscaper's Unpaid OT Dispute Ends in Retaliation

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A former employee has filed suit against Joseph Sofield City-Scape, Inc., City-Scape Landscaping, Inc., and two individual owners claiming they failed to pay him proper overtime wages and fired him in retaliation for voicing his concerns about their compensation policy. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff regularly worked 60 hours per week and was paid a flat weekly salary, regardless of how many hours he worked. He says he was never provided with wage statements that detailed his hours and rate of pay. The complaint claims that the plaintiff complained on several occasions to one of the individual defendants about his lack of overtime wages, but that his concerns went unheeded. The plaintiff says the final time he introduced the subject, his boss “became enraged, and told [the plaintiff] that if [the plaintiff] were to sue him or otherwise take action about his pay that [the defendants] would make it their personal mission to ensure that [the plaintiff] could not find a job elsewhere and that nobody would hire someone who complained.” The plaintiff claims he terminated his employment after being threatened that he would be fired unless he quit.