The parties settled on Tuesday, with the Tavern agreeing to pay Craghead and eight other current and former employees who were employed between 2019 and 2022 in amounts ranging from $100 to $4,500, plus attorney’s fees.
The total settlement cost is $27,220, court records show.
According to the initial complaint, Craghead worked as kitchen staff at Ye Olde Trail Tavern, later promoted to kitchen manager. During her employment, Craghead was not paid an overtime rate of time-and-a-half, despite regularly working “between 43 and 76 hours per week,” according to the filing. Instead she was paid her regular hourly rate for all hours worked.
Craghead raised the issue with the general manager of the restaurant on several occasions, the court filing says, and was informed that the defendants “do not pay overtime.”
Trail Tavern and the Beards denied the allegations in their initial filing, dated in January of 2023, but changed their policies the same year to pay overtime, court records show.
In May this year, Judge Michael Newman of the Southern District Court of Ohio granted a joint motion to determine “similarly situated individuals” who may join the plaintiffs in this case. Collective action suits under the Free Labor Standards Act are different from class-action suits in a few ways, one being that FLSA suits must be opted into, rather than opted out of in class action cases.
Neither the attorneys for Craghead nor Trail Tavern representatives returned requests for comment this week.
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