Claims that Regal Entertainment Group and Edwards Theaters violated labor laws by forcing employees to work for free through break periods has landed inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse.
Though the labor law cases were originally filed in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, the dispute now will be heard in the Santa Ana courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter.
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Primary plaintiffs Martin Orejel and Kelley Mazzei claim that from at least 2008 to 2012 theater management understaffed theaters, required employees to work while clocked out in violation of laws and must pay overtime for the alleged cheating.
But lawyers for the defendants assert that the lawsuits are defective and inaccurate. They want the claims dismissed prior to a trial.
Carter will entertain the parties at a scheduled Oct. 21 hearing.
In April, Regal Entertainment–which has a $2.7 billion in annual revenue, is based in Knoxville and owns more than 7,300 movie screens nationwide–announced it laid off employees in response to the claimed upcoming burdens of Obamacare.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.