Security Guards Settle Claims of Violated California Work Break Laws

After years of litigation, a Class of security guards can now benefit from a $130 million settlement with G4S Secure Solutions, resolving claims of violated California work break laws.

The defendant, G4S Secure Solutions, had been known as Wackenhut Corp. prior to a 2010 business name change. The class action lawsuit was initiated in 2005 by a former employee of Wackenhut and other security personnel that worked in the nine year period between January 2001 and December 2010.

The plaintiffs claimed that they had not been granted off the clock meals and rest periods allowed by California work break laws. The large body of plaintiffs also indicated that they were not given a proper record of their work hours in wage statements that should have accompanied their paychecks.

As indicated by Bloomberg, G4S Secure Solutions was founded in the early 1950s and is headquartered in Jupiter, Flda. It has offices in California as well as across the globe and claims to have a little over 110,000 employees.

G4S announced the parties coming to an agreement on its website on Jan. 22, 2019, but left the exact amount to be determined along a continuum between $100 to $130 million. The settlement must be finally approved by the Superior Court of the State of California, then go through a process of administration to distribute payments to Class Members.

G4S estimates that the financial transaction related to the settlement will take place sometime in the last two quarters of 2019. Meanwhile, it claims to continually strive to keep abreast of California work break laws and other Golden State employment laws, so that it can avoid running into similar litigation problems in the future.

The case which accused the defendant of violating California work break laws has beleaguered the system for approximately 15 years. As reported by Law360, the parties that had been opposed and worked tirelessly in litigation had to change focus and work with just as much devotion and determination to reach an agreement.

The security company had two other class action lawsuits in recent years, which were settled for a total of about $7.6 million. Because of changes in case law in the state of California over the last few years, it has been difficult to resolve this longest running class action on some of the same terms.

The 2005 class action was decertified by the California State Appellate Court in 2016, applying a U.S. Supreme Court case from 2011 that made it more difficult for employees to win class certification for employment law claims.

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