Lawsuit claims North Myrtle Beach, SC restaurant failed to pay servers minimum wage

Maria Elena Scott
·2 min read
5

A lawsuit alleges that Dagwoods North LLC failed to pay servers at the North Myrtle Beach restaurant federal minimum wage.

Danielle Maffeo, who started working as a server at the restaurant around March 2022, filed the suit on behalf of herself and other workers. She is represented by Charleston-based firm Mingledorff and Patterson.

Dagwood’s North Myrtle Beach marketing director Tiffany Doolittle declined to comment on the suit. “We do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” Doolittle wrote in an email to The Sun News.

The Dagwood’s Deli and Sports Bar North Myrtle Beach location violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act’s policies by paying tipped employees a sub-minimum wage without providing adequate notice of taking a tip credit, according to the lawsuit.

The fair labor law defines tipped employees as workers who regularly receive more than $30 a month in tips. The tip credits allow employers to count servers’ tips toward their minimum wage obligation. But if an employee’s tips and wage don’t equal the minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference. The tip credit also doesn’t apply to tipped employees unless they have been informed of these tip credit provisions, according to the law.

The suit also alleges that the North Myrtle Beach Dagwood’s location violated the labor law by requiring servers to perform side work in which they didn’t receive tips for more than 30 continuous minutes and making employees purchase uniforms and tools without reimbursement.

“As a result, Plaintiff and all similarly situated Restaurant Servers have been denied federal minimum wages during various workweeks within the relevant time period,” the suit alleges.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in South Carolina, seeks a jury trial and requests that the court award unpaid federal minimum wages, the tip credit it claims was unlawfully taken, liquidated damages, attorney’s fees and litigation costs and any further relief deemed reasonable by the court.