The U. S. Department of Labor announced on July 30, 2024 that a Pennsylvania federal court has awarded $35.8 million in overtime back wages and liquidated damages to 6,000 current and former workers employed by the operators of 15 residential skilled nursing, rehabilitation and assisted living facilities in western Pennsylvania that willfully denied them overtime pay.
On July 22, 2024, after a 13-day bench trial, the judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania is the Department of Labor’s latest step to recoup wages and damages, jointly and severally, from the 15 nursing facilities, their owner and CEO Samuel “Sam” Halper and CHMS Group, the payroll office that the defendants used to oversee and implement their illegal compensation practices. The action follows an investigation by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in Pittsburgh and litigation by its Office of the Solicitor in Philadelphia.
Investigators reportedly discovered that the employers violated the Fair Labor Standards Act for years, across their enterprise, by doing the following:
- Willfully failing to pay employees for all hours worked, including work done during meal breaks.
- Failing to incorporate all promised compensation, including non-discretionary bonuses and shift differentials, when calculating overtime pay.
- Avoiding paying overtime by incorrectly treating employees as exempt from the Act’s overtime requirements.
- Not keeping accurate records of hours employees worked and compensation due for those hours.
After the employers refused to resolve their violations administratively, the Department of Labor filed suit in 2018 in federal court. The trial involved 50 testifying witnesses and more than 600 exhibits. Senior Trial Attorney Alejandro Herrera and trial attorneys Mohamed Seifeldein and Erik Unger conducted the trial on behalf of the Department of Labor. A representative of the Department of Labor’s Office of the Chief Information Officer testified to the significant effort to summarize the employers’ inaccurate employment records and determine the amount of back wages due. In addition to being jointly and severally liable for the back wages and damages, Halper, CHMS Group and the 15 facilities are all permanently forbidden from further FLSA violations.
When hard-working nursing home employees are not paid what they are legally entitled to, they’re justifiable anger that should be focused solely on their employers may carry over to the manner in which they provide services for the vulnerable nursing home residents under their care – one wrong does not justify the other wrong. Nonetheless, most nursing home staff do their best to assist and care for the nursing home residents, limited by the lack of appropriate support they are provided by their employers.
If you or a loved one may have been injured (or worse) as a result of medical malpractice in a nursing home in Pennsylvania or in another U.S. state, you should promptly find a Pennsylvania medical malpractice lawyer, or a medical malpractice lawyer in your state, who may investigate your nursing home medical malpractice claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a nursing home medical malpractice case, if appropriate.
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