Popular Tacoma sandwich shop to pay $105K to resolve wage dispute with former worker
MSM Deli, one of Tacoma’s favorite sandwich shops, will pay $105,000 to settle a wage dispute with a former longtime employee, who is also a relative of the owner, according to documents shared with The News Tribune.
Hashed Mousa and two of his children, both now 20 years old, will receive $100,000 to distribute as they deem appropriate. An additional $5,000 will go to a third child, age 16, the terms of which, as a minor, must be approved by a judge.
The agreement is the resolution to a lawsuit filed by Mousa alleging he had been improperly paid for his work over the course of more than 20 years at the deli. The suit also claims that owner Jamal Muthala verbally promised him an ownership stake, only to reject the notion earlier this year.
Under terms of the agreement, Muthala does not admit any wrongdoing, liability or fault. His attorney Neil Dial confirmed to The News Tribune that a settlement was reached between the two parties but declined to offer further comment.
In a response to the allegations in the original complaint filed in March, MSM denied claims of breach of contract or failure to pay wages, describing them as “frivolous and advanced without reasonable cause,” and said that the statute of limitations renders those issues dating back more than a decade as moot.
Muthala did not technically own the deli until June 2011 when he took over for his father and formed MSM Grocery and Deli, Inc.
The complaint also alleges that Mousa and his family lived in a property on Division Street, which the Muthalas own, and that they invested their own money into renovating under the auspices that Mousa would eventually become the owner.
In court documents, Muthala denied these claims, saying the employee was paid a salary for “all of his hours worked” and that potential ownership of the property or the business was never on the table.
In dispute in court documents is when the employee was first paid and whether the salary met minimum wage requirements for non-supervisory work, said Mousa’s attorney Russell Knight.
During his 20-plus years at MSM Deli, Mousa worked primarily as a meat slicer, Knight said. The rest of the staff — a dozen employees at the time of the lawsuit — was paid hourly, he said, adding it was “abnormal” for someone in Mousa’s role to be on salary, which has different standards for overtime.
The lawsuit claims he worked long hours six or seven days a week, and only in 2014 was first paid $2,900 per month. In its response, MSM says it paid him $3,500 per month since June 2011, when Muthala took over the business.
Mousa began working for the company around 1998 after emigrating to the U.S. from Yemen. He is related to Muthala but not by blood, said Knight: MSM’s founder (and the namesake of the popular Mike’s Deluxe sandwich) Mike Muthala married Mousa’s mother, in the process adopting Mousa, whose biological father had died.
Mousa has six children, three of whom started working at MSM Deli in 2016, according to Knight.
In the course of investigating Mousa’s situation, he said, his legal team learned that the children had performed standard job duties after school for two to three hours at a time and on weekends for up to six hours. They were not paid for their services, said Knight, who will move to dismiss the lawsuit as a result of the settlement agreement.
Had they not reached an accord, they would have moved to add the children to the lawsuit, he said.
“The bigger claim that we discovered was that the children were not paid at all,” Knight said. “Hashed [Mousa] was owed thousands of dollars, but the kids were owed tens of thousands of dollars.”
Under Washington state law, adults over the age of 16 must be paid full minimum wage, while kids ages 14 and 15 must be paid at least 85 percent of that amount.
Per the settlement agreement, Mousa and his three children involved in the dispute agree not to pursue further litigation against Muthala, his father or MSM Deli. It also confirms they do not “have or claim any interest in MSM or MMSA,” referring to the legal entity of the Division Street property.
“This agreement is intended to resolve any and all disputes between Hashed Mousa and his children arising from or relating to any work they performed at MSM Deli,” according to the agreement.
