STOCKBRIDGE — Owners of the high-end Wheatleigh hotel have been ordered to pay a "global settlement" of $550,000 to former employees for attorneys' fees, unpaid tips and overtime wages, and failure to pay minimum wage.
The employees, 44 in all, will receive a combined total of $277,106; the rest goes to attorneys' fees. U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Robertson issued her ruling April 16.
The initial civil lawsuit alleging violations of state and federal labor laws was filed in June 2018 by attorneys for former waitstaff employee Arleta Mongue of Pittsfield, who worked there for nine months beginning in May 2017. In September 2021, the court allowed 40 other former employees who worked for Wheatleigh between May 2017 and March 2020 to join what became a class action lawsuit.
Three other former employees — guest services manager Mark Brown, restaurant supervisor Christian Perreault Hamel, and housekeeping manager Mary Harris — filed individual lawsuits and accepted settlements in April 2022 of $8,103, $8,124 and $11,961, respectively, plus $180,000 in attorneys’ fees.
Defendants included owners Linfield and Susan Simon of New Haven, Conn., and former general manager Marc Wilhelm.
The Wheatleigh, which has held a 5-star rating from Forbes Magazine for its hotel and restaurant, announced in February that it was closing to the general public but would honor weddings and special events booked through this summer. Then, it will be put on the market for an expected sale to a new owner.
Wheatleigh, an 1893 Gilded Age estate seen in an undated historical photo, has been a hotel since the 1950s. Current owners Linfield and Susan Simon owe 44 former employees a total of $277,000 in a wage case settlement ordered by the U.S. District Court in Springfield.
Mongue, the lead plaintiff, was paid the hourly tipped minimum service-rate of $5 an hour at the time even though nearly half of her workload included non-tipped work, according to the lawsuit, but she should have been paid the state minimum wage at the time, $11 per hour.
Although state law limits customers’ tips only to waitstaff employees, the lawsuit claimed that tips were pooled and unlawfully distributed to supervisors, including the restaurant manager, as well as prep cooks and other ineligible staffers.
Mongue, who declined comment through her attorney, will receive $14,029 as her share of the court award. The 40 other former employees who were part of the class-action lawsuit will get individual awards based on their length of employment and the hours they worked each week. Those awards ranged from $111 to $16,356.
The lawsuit filed by attorneys Jeffrey Morneau and Lan Kantany of Connor & Morneau, based in Springfield, sought to recover unpaid compensation, interest and attorneys’ fees. Additional legal work was by Michael Rivkin, an associate with Cohen Kinne Valicenti & Cook in Pittsfield.
Linfield Simon told The Eagle on Monday that he plans to appeal the U.S. District Court ruling to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. He declined further comment, but confirmed that Wheatleigh will be put on the market “very soon.” The Simons are represented by attorney Matt Horvitz of Goulston & Storrs in Boston. He did not respond to requests for comment.
"I’m highly confident that any appeal will be unsuccessful," Morneau said. "If The Wheatleigh, Mr. Simon or any of the defendants don’t come forward and pay, we will continue to chase them down and get the money.”
“We thought the employees had a very viable claim that they were harmed by The Wheatleigh’s wage theft,” he added in a phone interview.
“We tried to resolve the case early on, but we were not successful at the early stage. It was very contentious litigation for nearly six years. It certainly took longer than most cases like this, because Mr. Simon and Wheatleigh dug their heels in so deep," Morneau said. "He didn’t need to do that, he could have taken care of the employees that were harmed as a result of The Wheatleigh and his conduct.”
In Morneau’s view, “They basically spent money defending a case that was indefensible as opposed to taking care of the workers who were harmed by the wage theft that Mr. Simon and The Wheatleigh had committed. They have dragged the plaintiffs through an extraordinary amount of litigation and the plaintiffs intend to collect on the court’s judgment.”
Wheatleigh, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was constructed in 1893 as a replica of a two-story 16th-century Florentine palazzo by Henry H. Cook, a New York railroad magnate, as a wedding present to his daughter, Georgie Bruce Cook. She married the Cuban-born Spanish nobleman Carlos de Heredia, Count of Fuentes, and became Countess de Heredia.
The Simons purchased the Gilded Age property for $530,000 in the early 1980s. The town now assesses the 22-acre property at $3,898,200.