Fox Settles Employee Classification Lawsuit

Media giant Fox has agreed to pay a settlement to resolve a class action employee classification lawsuit which alleges the company misclassified their interns.

The class action employee classification lawsuit was brought forward by former unpaid interns, stating they should have been classified as employees.

According to the agreement terms, each class member may eligible to receive $495 from the settlement.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley has been asked to finalize the deal after five former unpaid interns at Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc. and Fox Entertainment Group Inc. filed a motion for settlement approval and asked the judge to approve the deal.

This class action employee classification lawsuit settlement applies to any intern who worked between 2005 and 2010, and worked for the company unpaid for at least two weeks. According to these terms, approximately 80 interns may be eligible recipients of the settlement.

The plaintiffs urged Judge Pauley to quickly approve the settlement, stating the Second Circuit Court had reversed his prior ruling earlier this year that granted class certification and partial summary judgment to the plaintiffs.

This greatly increases the risk of the litigation progressing forward, as the plaintiffs point out the strict protocol surrounding class certification in the Second Circuit Court.

“The Second Circuit’s primary beneficiary standard and its decertification of the class and collective present significant risk to plaintiffs on the merits and with regard to certification. [T]he Second Circuit’s decision, despite its revised language in the amended opinion, makes class and collective certification extremely challenging. [T]his risk strongly supports the settlement because, under it, all class members who make a claim will be paid,” the plaintiffs argued

Fox Employee Classification Lawsuit

This class action employee classification lawsuit stems back to September 2010, when named plaintiffs Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman sued Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc.

During their time working on the movie Black Swan, they claim that Fox was essentially using them as free labor. They claim that using interns instead of employees lowered labor costs.

However in July 2015, the Second Circuit Court reversed Judge Pauley’s ruling after declaring the interns were not employees and that a “primary beneficiary test” should be implemented to determine employee status.

Later in January 2016, the court amended its opinion after acknowledging the fact that employees and interns are different in the fact that interns enter the job “with the expectation of receiving educational or vocational benefits.”

According to the class action employee classification lawsuit, the plaintiffs gained no educational experience during their internships.

Now plaintiffs are asking Judge Pauley to end the class action employee classification lawsuit, requesting the approved payments of $3,500 to $7,500 for the named plaintiffs with the exception of Glatt who had chosen not to participate in the settlement.

The class action employee classification lawsuit settlement also permits plaintiffs to ask up to $200,000 to cover attorneys’ fees.

The Fox Employee Classification Lawsuits are Glatt et al. v. Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc. and MacCown v. Fox, Case No.1:11-cv-06784 and Case No. 1:13-cv-04406 respectively, both in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

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