$280,000 deal closes out federal case over claims of unpaid wages against Erie chocolatier

An Erie chocolatier has agreed to pay $280,000 to end a class-action lawsuit that claimed the company regularly underpaid as many as 181 hourly workers for three years, ending in September 2022.

The settlement, reached in U.S. District Court in Erie, requires Romolo Chocolates Inc. and its owner, Anthony Stefanelli, to compensate the employees for what the suit claimed were wages that went unpaid between July 25, 2019, and September 1, 2022.

The gross payments are estimated to average $463 per class member, with the highest estimated gross payment at $2,221 and the lowest at an estimated $14, according to court records.

The settlement checks are to compensate the class members for approximately 10 minutes of unpaid time per shift, accounting for the regular and overtime rates of pay for each class member, according to court records.

Among the claims were that employees were not be paid for attending meetings before their shifts started in the morning — the lawsuit describes such occurrences as "pre-shift off-the-clock work" — and that they were not paid for other time they were on the clock.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Erie on July 25, 2022. More than a year of negotiations yielded a deal, and U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter approved the settlement on Dec. 20.

Number of people who will receive money is in flux

The number of people who will receive payments remains fluid. The claims administrator on the case sent notices about the class action to 181 employees, though not all of them participated in the suit and several could not be located, according to court records.

The number of participating class members stood at 176 as of mid-December, but the court records show that number could change by the time all the payments are distributed. Based on the two-year period that the settlement covers, some of the individuals would now be former employees, but some could also be current employees.

Not all of the $280,000 will be distributed to members of the class. Included in the deal is a deduction of $93,333 for attorney's fees — 33% of the total amount of the settlement — and deductions of $2,413 for litigation costs and $7,500 for the claims administrator, according to court records.

The records list the final settlement amount to be distributed to the class members as $174,254. The records also show that any of the money that is unable to be distributed to the class members will be returned to Romolo Chocolates.

Romolo Chocolates admits no liability with settlement

Romolo Chocolates Inc., 1515 W. Eighth St., and Stefanelli were the only defendants in the case. They denied any wrongdoing. They were prepared to argue, among other things, that they properly paid all the workers in accordance with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act and that the way the class-action claims were structured was incompatible with the law.

The settlement does not represent an admission of liability, according to the settlement agreement detailed in court records.

Romolo Chocolates and Stefanelli agreed to the deal because they "have concluded that any further defense of this litigation would be protracted, uncertain and expensive for all Parties," according to a joint motion to settle the case. "Unless this settlement is made, Defendants will need to devote substantial amounts of time, energy and resources to the defense of the claims."

The lawyer for Romolo Chocolates and Stefanelli, Arthur Martinucci, declined to comment beyond what is in the court filings. The lawyer who signed the settlement agreement on behalf of the class members, Eric Sands, of a law firm in Jersey City, New Jersey, did not respond to an email about the case.

The settlement agreement requires that lawyers for both parties "shall respond to any media inquiries by saying that they are pleased that the matter has been amicably resolved, with no further comment."

Lead plaintiff in class-action suit made $16 an hour

The lead plaintiff in the case was Melissa Parmenter, a former employee who sued on behalf of herself and other employees in a similar situation.

She worked at Romolo Chocolates as an hourly production worker from September 2021 through May 2022, according to the lawsuit. She made $16 an hour. As part of the settlement, she will receive, in addition to payment for lost wages, an incentive award of $2,500 in recognition of the time she spent on the case as the representative of the class, according to court records.

Parmenter claimed that she and other hourly employees regularly worked more than 40 hours a week but were not paid for all the time they worked over the 40 hours, according to the lawsuit.

She claimed that Romolo Chocolates "implemented a company-wide policy requiring hourly-paid employees to attend daily morning meetings and did not compensate hourly-paid employees for this time," according to the suit.

Parmenter also claimed, according to the suit, that "hourly-paid employees were not paid for morning meetings even when they were clocked in before the meetings took place" and that "hourly-paid employees were not paid for all time worked (past) the end of their scheduled shifts, even when they remained clocked in at the end of their shifts."

Parmenter claimed that she complained to management "about being shorted pay" but that Romolo Chocolates "failed to compensate Plaintiff for all hours worked."

Settlement talks started soon after Parmenter and her lawyers filed her complaint. Once Romolo Chocolates retained Martinucci as its lawyer, he contacted Parmenter's lawyers "to investigate the feasibility of a class/collective settlement in the matter," according to a motion Martinucci filed on Nov. 22, 2022.

Martinucci in the motion said he provided Parmenter's lawyers with payroll records, and that her lawyers made an initial settlement demand on Nov. 16, 2022. Martinucci and Parmenter's lawyers then worked on the deal that became final with the judge's approval of the settlement on Dec. 20.

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie PA chocolatier agrees to pay $280,000 over claims of unpaid wages