The owners of the former Peaches Gentleman’s Club in Jacksonville have been found liable by default for failing to properly pay four former exotic dancers and three other employees according to the provisions of federal labor laws.
They now face a July 7 trial in the Little Rock courtroom of U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright on the amount of damages they must pay, an attorney for the plaintiffs said Tuesday.
Wright filed an order granting the plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions against the defendants because of their repeated failure to respond to the lawsuit, despite court orders to do so. She said a sanction as severe as a default judgment was a “harsh remedy,” but was warranted because the defendants’ actions amounted to “a conscious, willful violation of the Court’s orders.”
The plaintiffs, represented by the Sanford Law Firm in Little Rock, filed suit in 2012 against Barney’s Barn Inc., doing business as Peaches Gentleman’s Club, and Danny Martindill, his wife, Casey Martindill, and Michael Jones, all of whom owned the nightclub until it went out of business.
The lawsuit contends that the workers - four dancers, a bouncer, a disc jockey and assistant manager, and a lead bartender - should have been classified as employees, which are subject to statutory minimum-wage requirements, and not as private contractors. The lawsuit seeks compensation it contends the workers should have been paid for overtime, among other things, under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Court documents show that the plaintiffs filed requests for information from the defendants in May, and then, after months of trying to obtain the information without court intervention, filed a motion asking the court to compel the defendants to respond, which the judge granted on Oct. 17. An attorney for the defendants, however, failed to turn over the information within 10 days, as ordered.
In an order filed Jan. 13, Wright noted that the case had been set for a nonjury trial Jan. 6, but had to be postponed because of the defendants’ failure to supply the requested information, making it impossible for the plaintiffs to prepare for trial.
She said she had, however, received a response from defense attorney R. Keith Vaughan of Jacksonville, who asked her not to find the business in default, saying he takes “full responsibility” for the previous failures to supply information, “and now has all the information his clients have … and is preparing answers thereto.”
According to Vaughan’s written filing, he had initially asked a new employee to handle the requests and didn’t know, until the court issued its order to compel, that the work hadn’t been done. He said his staff again assured him in October that the information would be compiled and turned over to the plaintiffs,but again, the work wasn’t done. He said he consequently fired an employee, and then met with the clients himself around Thanksgiving, but later became ill and forgot to follow up.
Vaughan also said in that filing - his last one - that the Martindills were going through a divorce, and “there has been some difficulty in getting the information requested.” He said he planned to withdraw as counsel for the club and its owners.
Vaughan said Wednesday that he isn’t sure what happened, and is “looking into it to see if I screwed up somewhere, and if it’s my fault, I’m going to take the blame for it.”
He said he also is considering filling a motion for reconsideration, once he tracks down the problem.
Attorney Amber Schubert of the Sanford firm said Tuesday that the trial on damages will proceed regardless of whether the defendants participate.
The Sanford firm, meanwhile, has two other similar federal lawsuits pending in Arkansas on behalf of exotic dancers at other clubs.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 02/20/2014