Business & Tech
East Village Indian Restaurant Babu Ji Settles Wage Lawsuit for Nearly $100,000
The servers of the trendy Avenue B restaurant claimed the owners never paid them overtime and pocketed their tips.
EAST VILLAGE, NY — Babu Ji, a contemporary Indian restaurant at Avenue B and 11th Street, settled a lawsuit this week with two of its servers who said they were paid below minimum wage, Eater reported. Employees Warren Bayani and Mehmood Qureshi claimed the owners of the restaurant, Jessi and Jennifer Singh, didn't pay them overtime and pocketed their tips. The Singhs settled the suit for $95,000 split between the two employees and admitted no wrongdoing, public court records showed.
Bayani and Qureshi said they were paid under minimum wage at a flat $800 rate a week. They were never paid for hours they worked overtime, they said. The $95,000 sum was the alleged total of the employees' damages plus the fee of hiring the powerhouse labor attorney, Maimon Kirschenbaum, to present their case.
You can see the full lawsuit here, in which the employees say the restaurant owners' pattern of "stealing from their employees has violated their employees' rights under the FLSA and New York law."
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Babu Ji and Kirschenbaum did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Photo credit: Google Maps
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