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Thread: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

  1. #1
    Member MercedesNYC's Avatar
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    Default Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    Gold Club Dancers: Final Settlement of Gold Club Class Action Suit!

    Dancers from the Gold Club, 650 HOWARD STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, from MAY 24,
    2000 to FEBRUARY 18, 2004: If you didn't opt out, then you are a member of the class for
    the class action suit.

    For more information about this settlement you can contact:
    1) Claims Administrator, Gilardi & Co., at 1-800-780-8015,
    2) OR Plaintiffs' Counsel, James Quadra, Moscone, Emblidge & Quadra, 180 Montgomery
    Street, Suite 1240, San Francisco, CA 94104, 415-362-3599.

    This link has all the info:




    Info: The Class alleged that Defendants violated California law by treating Class members
    as independent contractors, when those persons were in fact employees of one or more of
    the Defendants. Defendants denied the Class' allegations and asserted that Class members
    were properly treated as independent contractors, not employees. The case has settled
    and the settlement provides for reimbursement to class members of stage fees they paid to
    management of the Gold Club during the class period and reimbursement to class members
    of work expenses for costumes, shoes and stage make up purchased for use, and used at,
    the Gold Club during the class period, up to a maximum aggregate amount of $2,500,000.00,
    plus attorneys fees and incentive payments to the named class representatives.

    The parties have agreed to settle all claims under the terms set forth in this notice and
    on July 11, 2006, this Court gave final approval to a settlement of the Class Action,
    approved the dismissal of this action, a mutual release, and directed that a judgment be
    entered pursuant to the settlement.

    CLAIMS PROCESS


    Please go to the link below for complete information:



    If you danced at the Gold Club from 5-2000 to 2-2004, you can "submit a notarized claim
    form signed under penalty of perjury that provides the class member's legal name, stage
    name(s), current complete mailing address, telephone number and social security number,
    and provides the dates they performed at The Gold Club (such dates being provided
    specifically or approximately) during the class period, the approximate or exact amount
    of stage fees paid, and the amount of unreimbursed work-related expenses incurred during
    the class period as supported by receipts or tax returns to be attached to the claim
    form. To make a claim, you must completely fill out a claim form and have it notarized by
    a notary public. If you are receiving this notice in a publication or if no claim form is
    attached to this notice, you may receive a claim form by contacting the claims
    administrator, Gilardi & Co., LLC, at 1-800-780-8015 or writing to Gilardi & Co. LLC,
    P.O. Box 1110, Corte Madera, CA 94976-1110, or by visiting and
    clicking on the "Gold Club" link.

    The notarized claim form must be mailed to Gilardi & Co. at the address indicated on the
    Claim Form no later than October 2, 2006. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

    If you wish to obtain information about this settlement you may contact the Claims
    Administrator, Gilardi & Co., at 1-800-780-8015, or Plaintiffs' Counsel, James Quadra,
    Moscone, Emblidge & Quadra, 180 Montgomery Street, Suite 1240, San Francisco, CA 94104,
    415-362-3599. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE COURT. If you are a class member please do not
    contact counsel for the defendant, Douglas Melton, as he is not permitted to speak with
    you. -- Carol Leigh
    Bay Area Sex Workers Advocacy Network

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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    ^^^ hopefully this will mean that a few girls will be able to get the Gilardi's to cough up a grand or two of 'illegally' charged stage fees and purchases of costumes, shoes and makeup.

    Undoubtedly this will also mean that any settlement money payouts to the dancers will be reported to the IRS and taxed.

    This also arguably means that the dancers who claim a settlement are affirming that they were actually working as 'employees' for however many previous years that they worked at the Gold Club ... which in all probability will result in IRS and/or California FTB audits to disallow any 'independent contractor' business expense tax deductions the dancers claimed during those previous years which, as 'employees', they were not legally entitled to claim.

    Perhaps most importantly, this creates more legal precedent that the California 'employee dancer' law is in fact constitutional, and thus it will be more widely enforced in the future.

    IMHO this is a Phyrric Victory if there ever was one ...

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    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    I have a mixed opinion on this.

    One side is with Mel. Whether the government is going to get a bug up their ass I suppose depends upon how much is awarded. Perhaps it will be the usual class action reward of ten bucks and a coupon to the gold club restaurant (if such a thing exists - but ya know what I mean.)

    My other side is like "Well, at least I have seen a bunch of dancers who stood up for themselves." Accepting the award might mean some amended returns (and probably the government will say thank you very much to 90% of the check the girls are given.) It sounds as if many owners do treat their contracted dancers as if they were employees.

    Does it really punish the owners? I suppose so. But they will probably just raise stage fees.

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    ^^^ actually, if this class action suit serves as precedent, club owners won't be able to raise stage fees since it is illegal to charge 'employees' for the privelege of working. What the clubs could legally do though is exercise their 'employer's ownership of employee labor', meaning that legally speaking the clubs could pay as little as they wanted in terms of 'employee sales commission' payouts on private dances and VIP room trips ... including zero commission ... meaning that in the extreme case dancers would be paid say $12 an hour by the club with 'employee' comp and unemployment coverage, but would also be required to perform private dances and VIP room trips without further payment as a condition of their employment. Probably clubowners would not totally eliminate 'employee sales commissions', but with a higher hourly base pay and a lower percentage of private dance and VIP room sales translating into dancer earnings, IMHO the 'employee' business model rewards marginal dancers who sit around instead of hustling and penalizes dancers who hustle their butts off to drum up private dance and VIP room sales.

    If the clubowners are to be punished, it will be due to the fact that they will now be required to pay the 7.5% 'employer's share of SSI and medicare taxes, as well as being required to pay state unemployment and workmen's comp insurance premiums, based on reported 'employee' dancer earnings. This of course would amount to a hefty chunk of bucks per dancer, which the club would undoubtedly attempt to recover by the club 'keeping' a higher percentage of the money spent by customers on private dances, VIP room trips etc. There is only so much the club can do on its own i.e. raising cover charges and/or drink prices without affecting customer satisfaction, so there will be no feasible alternative other than to divert customer money currently being paid directly to dancers and redirect it towards paying the 'employer's SSI tax payments, the 'employer's comp and unemployment insurance premiums etc. first.

    I agree that in some socioeconomic sense, there is some satisfaction to be taken by the girls who successfully followed through on this class action lawsuit against an arguably 'abusive' clubowner. But again I'm very concerned that the end result was actually a Phyrric Victory i.e. these dancers pocketing a couple of grand for their trouble, in exchange for having the take home earnings potential for themselves and every other California dancer eventually being reduced by some 25-50% between diverted customer money now being kept by the club to pay 'new' SSI, comp and unemployment 'taxes', by the loss of 'independent contractor' tax deductions to reduce their own tax burdens, and through the inevitable tighter accounting of customer money now having to be first taken in through the club's cash register and later paid out to dancers (with a hefty percentage now being 'kept' by the club) through the club's payroll system as fully reported W2 'employee' income with taxes withheld.
    ~
    Last edited by Melonie; 08-02-2006 at 08:57 PM.

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    Veteran Member Lurker's Avatar
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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    Wow...The amazing thing to me about this is the SETTLEMENT amount. $2.5MM over 4 years is $600K/year, or $1.8K/night. So if they charge $200 in stage fees to each dancer, it's 9 dancers a day they are paying back in stage fees. If the club has 50 dancers in a given day, they're settling for 20% of their maximum liability.

    That suggests to me that A) they didn't think they had much of a chance to win or B) they didn't want to go to trial and lose b/c it would make it hard to keep charging stage fees (which I assume, given that it doesn't look like there was a cease and desist as part of the settlement, they will--I guess this is just the cost of doing very profitable business).
    "All this time you were pretending
    So much for my happy ending."
    --Avril Lavigne

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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    ^^^ just guessing, but had this case actually gone to trial it would have provided the ironclad legal precedent that California dancers are in fact 'employees' ... which would then have quickly proliferated to every strip club in the state being required to pay minimum wage + the 'employer's share' of SSI/medicare tax, plus workmen's comp and unemployment insurance premiums on behalf of every dancer. Additionally such an ironclad legal precedent would have 'outlawed' the charging of stage fees, would have required that dancer tip earnings be run through the club's cash register and payroll system - thus providing much tighter documentation in regard to both club and dancer cash flows and taxable earnings. Given that the Gilardi's own or hold part interest in a whole bunch of clubs, such an ironclad legal precedent being set would have potentially reduced the Gilardi's 'real world' California club earnings by millions. By agreeing to the settlement, the precedent set is much weaker i.e. not ironclad and specifically focused upon the one club. Thus by agreeing to pay out what for them is probably a very small percentage of annual California club income to get a bunch of very vocal dancers to 'shut up and go away' and to avoid a California judge actually having to make a ruling on the underlying issue of 'employee' dancer status, this was a very shrewd short term business decision.

    Also, I would speculate that somewhere in the fine print on the Gilardi's side of the settlement agreement is a provision that this club not be (re)audited by the Cal FTB for X years.
    ~
    Last edited by Melonie; 08-03-2006 at 09:43 AM.

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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    Ooooo, I work for Galardi. Do you think there's any chance they'll stop charging fees in other states too? <hope,hope>

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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Melonie
    ^^^ actually, if this class action suit serves as precedent, club owners won't be able to raise stage fees since it is illegal to charge 'employees' for the privelege of working. What the clubs could legally do though is exercise their 'employer's ownership of employee labor', meaning that legally speaking the clubs could pay as little as they wanted in terms of 'employee sales commission' payouts on private dances and VIP room trips ... including zero commission ... meaning that in the extreme case dancers would be paid say $12 an hour by the club with 'employee' comp and unemployment coverage, but would also be required to perform private dances and VIP room trips without further payment as a condition of their employment.
    The way I see it is if more dancers want to have the "privaledge" of being an employee (and hence shooting themselves in the foot with a Howitzer), the clubs will probably go the way of how casino dealers are paid here in Vegas and other locations. They get minimum wage and work only for tips. The tips are either given directly to that dealer or distributed evenly throughout the shifts of combination of shifts in a 24-hour period. Most likely the tips will be given directly to the dancer but if they are, they have to be first given to the employer (club) which now means that taxes are to be withdrawn before payment is made to the dancer. This now means that all of her personal and financial records are on-file with Federal and local governments. Of course this is all above and beyond all the independent contractor benefits that she would be losing by being an employee but hey...free medical insurance (which she would be paying for anyway with her union dues to some capacity). Blech.

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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    On the other hand, this could easily turn into the victory from hell for some (many?!) of the class members as the figures submitted to the judge who approved the settlement have now been 'blessed' re accuracy on the basis of hard evidence by a court and are now part of the public record... IOW, hope their reported income for past few years bears at least some semblance to the amounts IRS will now be able to more accurately calculate and assert a reasonable basis for if/when they decide to impute new amounts and start auditing returns on basis of same.

    IMHO, for that, as well as a host of other reasons, this is going to wind up being a classic example of "Be careful what you wish for... For you may surely get it."
    "That's your answer Old Man? I guess you're a Hard Case too...."
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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    ^^^ add to that the fact that California has a 'bounty hunter' law in effect ... where any enterprising attorney or accountant or PI who provides the Cal Franchise Tax Board with information leading to the recovery of large amounts of unpaid state income tax is paid a 'cut' of any successful collections. They wouldn't get paid a 'cut' of federal tax collections, but undoubtedly the Cal FTB would inform the IRS and those federal taxes would get collected too. Given the information already on public record as a result of this trial and settlement in regards to dancers' real names and "officially verified" incomes, some enterprising Californian could have a huge payday waiting ( with the dancers on record receiving huge tax bills for the past 5 years !)

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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    A cut of successful collections. A phrase to be deeply contemplated indeed....

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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    soo i work at the gold club and ... do the dancers in this lawsuit know about it or is management tryin to keep it hush hush ? cuz its the first time ive heard about it!
    the new revolution is through compassion. sisterhood is powerful.



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    Default Re: Class Action Lawsuit Won Against Gold Club!!!

    ^^^ timely resurrection !

    It doesn't matter if current Gold Club dancers are aware of the lawsuit and ensuing settlement, since the settlement only affects girls who were named as being part of the 'class' in that lawsuit at the time it was originally filed.

    What might matter to current Gold Club dancers, and to other California dancers as well, is the Cal Franchise Tax Board following through on the taxable income aspects raised by the Gold Club lawsuit.

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