HARTFORD, Conn. (Legal Newsline) - A strip club must pay some of its dancers more than $100,000 in back wages and overtime, a Connecticut appeals court ruled, rejecting the club’s argument an arbitrator relied too heavily upon the testimony of the dancers about how many hours they worked.
Crystal Horrocks, Yaritza Reyes and four other dancers sued Keepers Inc. and Joseph Regensburger, the owner of Keepers Gentlemen’s Club in Milford, claiming they were incorrectly treated as independent contractors to get around state wage-and-hour laws.
Keepers argued the dancers were covered by an arbitration clause in their contract. A trial judge agreed, sending the matter to an arbitrator who ordered the club to pay $113,560.75 in damages for lost wages from 2013 to 2015 plus $85,000 in attorney fees and $2,981 in costs.
Keepers appealed, arguing the arbitrator gave too much weight to the oral testimony of the dancers instead of relying on the club’s business records. But the Connecticut Appellate Court upheld the award, saying the arbitrator was free to discount the club’s records because they were incomplete.
An arbitration award can only be overturned if several conditions are met, including that the error was obvious, the arbitrator ignored clear legal principals and the governing law is explicit and clearly applicable, the appeals court said.
The strip club owners said they had two methods for keeping track of dancers' hours. The “punch card” system consisted of photocopying a dancer’s identification card at the beginning of a shift and then from those a club employee would construct a “daily business recap.” The club also utilized a fingerprint scanner but all records were lost due to a “system malfunction.”
“Contrary to the defendants’ assertion, they were not prevented from submitting evidence to prove the number of hours worked by the plaintiffs, but the evidence that they did present, which was considered by the arbitrator, was deficient,” the appeals court ruled. “Faced with that deficiency, the arbitrator considered the oral testimony of the plaintiffs.”
The defendants also argued on appeal that the arbitrator’s award violated a public policy in favor of the freedom of contract, but the appeals court said that argument hadn’t been made at the trial court level and couldn’t be raised later.