Bank of America has settled a national class-action lawsuit brought by former employees who claimed they weren't paid for overtime work.
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Bank of America agreed to pay $36 million to the plaintiffs on behalf of its subsidiary, Landsafe, an appraisal management company. The Business Times noted that the company had already paid $5.8 million in a related but separate settlement to B of A's alleged violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The plaintiffs and Bank of America disagreed over classification of employees for the purposes of overtime payment.
"Landsafe is pleased to bring this matter to resolution," wrote Rick Simon, a spokesman for Bank of America, in an email to National Mortgage News. Simon stuck by the company's decision to classify staff appraisers as exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act and wrote that "we agreed to settle to avoid further legal costs."
"We have seen over and over again across the economy that employees are misclassified, depriving them of overtime compensation, when under state and federal law they are due the wages," Bryan Schwartz, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, told the Business Times.
The settlement brings the total payout for the bank to nearly $42 million.
