Facts

Defendant Live Nation Worldwide Inc. promotes, operates, and manages ticket sales for live entertainment in the United States and internationally. In the third quarter of this year, it reported $2.7 billion in revenue, attributing its growth to consumers' pent-up demand for concerts, festivals and other live events that had been stymied and squelched by the pandemic. Plaintiffs Anil Gupta, Colin Gharrity, and Morgan Katz worked for Live Nation. Gupta and Gharrity worked as Directors of Sales for Premium Seating, and so too with Katz, but as a Senior Director. Live Nation's sales representatives are responsible for selling, cross-selling, and upselling Live Nation's vast array of products and services in exchange for a salary and commission. In 2019, Gupta, Gharrity, and Katz opted into a collective action against Live Nation, alleging California wage violations. When Live Nation settled the California class claims in June 2021, Gupta, Gharrity and Katz filed a new complaint against Live Nation regarding their Fair Labor Standards Act claims.

PLAINTIFFS' CONTENTIONS: Plaintiffs Gupta, Gharrity, and Katz alleged that they had been misclassified as exempt from receiving time-and-a-half overtime wages. Certain Live Nation sales representatives, specifically, senior directors, directors, sales managers, sales coordinators and others tasked with selling Live Nations' products and services while in the office, put in more than 40 hours per week while being wrongly classified as workers exempt from overtime. Due to this, the three workers contended that they were owed unpaid wages for those overtime hours along with liquidated damages. Moreover, according to the three plaintiffs, Live Nation failed to keep accurate payroll records of the sales representatives' hours and wages nor did it maintain a system to track and record actual hours worked.

DEFENDANTS' CONTENTIONS: Defendant Live Nation denied all contentions. Specifically, they disagreed as to the amount of overtime wages plaintiffs were owed, if any.

Result

The case settled with $22,000 for Gupta, $42,000 for Gharrity, and $32,000 to Katz without accounting for their attorneys' fees and costs.