The Happiest Place on Earth was the Sappiest Place on Earth–as in sapping a Disneyland cast member of wages, vacation and other compensation, according to the ex-employee's complaint.
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Reykeel Zorio is seeking less than $75,000 for himself in a desired jury trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, but if his legal team–Pasadena's Neal Fialkow and James Cahill and Tarzana's Sahag Majarian–is successful in convincing other former Disney employees to join the class action, that could put the Mouse on the hook for $37.5 million, relates Deadline Hollywood.
The complaint seeks to cover more than 500 former nonexempt employees who worked at Disneyland, Disney's California Adventure, The Disneyland Hotel, Disney Grand Californian Hotel, Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel and Downtown Disney from 2010-2014. Their participation is needed because the Disney legal machine will otherwise crush a lone plaintiff like Zorio, his complaint essentially claims.
Zorio says he was hired in November 2011 by Disney Worldwide Services, the company's financial services arm, but was quickly transferred to Disneyland in Anaheim. When he left the company–for reasons not specified in the complaint–he alleges he was denied unpaid wages and vacation pay in violation of the state labor code and normal business practices.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.