Murphy Anderson clients win $600,000 in cutting-edge wage theft case
The D.C. Superior Court approved a settlement of $600,000 with Aves Construction Corp., J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, Inc., and Capitol Paving of D.C., Inc., to resolve claims that Aves Construction failed to pay the applicable prevailing wage rate to 55 laborers working on a contract project for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.
Murphy Anderson PLLC attorneys Mark Hanna and Roseann R. Romano, along with the Washington Lawyers Committee and Sherman Dunn P.C., represented the class of laborers, the majority of whom are immigrants.
The settlement provides that the entire class of workers will receive payments of over two times the wages owed to them. The case’s resolution also lays the legal foundation for decisional law that workers performing public works contracts may seek unpaid prevailing wages through litigation under D.C. wage-and-hour law.
The two lead plaintiffs in the case deserve much credit for their bravery and solidarity with the entire class. A testament of their commitment to justice, they rejected individual settlement offers early in the litigation and pressed forward to obtain unpaid wages and damages for the entire class of workers.
The case, which was filed on September 25, 2018, is Garcia et al. v Aves Construction, et al., 2018 CA 006791B (D.C. Super. Ct.).