Crown Heights Nurse Sues For $200K In Unpaid Wages: Lawsuit

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — A Crown Heights nursing home is facing a class-action lawsuit claiming it owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid overtime to its nursing staff.

The lawsuit, filed by former nurse Myriam Durand last week, contends that staff at Crown Heights Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation routinely worked 12 or 13 hour days at the St. Marks Avenue facility without the time-and-a-half overtime pay required under New York law.

The overtime hours cost Durand nearly $200,000 in unpaid wages in her two years at the nursing home, according to the lawsuit.

“Wage and hour theft is illegal,” Tyrone A. Blackburn, Durand’s attorney, told Patch. “It is time for Crown Heights Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to pay what they owe."

Durand, a 51-year-old mother of two, worked at the nursing home from 2015 until August 2017, according to the suit.

During that time, she would be asked to work hours outside her normal shifts and would end up working 60 to 72 hours a week.

“These hours were not reflected on her paychecks,” the complaint says.

New York law requires certain employers to pay their staff one and a half times their normal rate of pay for any hours worked beyond 40 hours a week.

A full 17 pages in the lawsuit is used for a list of days when Durand worked between about 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., totaling more than 3,000 hours that were left unpaid.

Despite Durand being the only named plaintiff, the lawsuit is filed as a “collective action” on behalf of all employees who may have faced a similar situation at the facility.

“Durand has firsthand knowledge of Defendant Corporation's violating the U.S. Department of Labor’s wage and hour laws,” the suit says.

Blackburn told Patch that whether other staff come forward and pursue legal action will be determined during discovery, the pre-trial process of gathering evidence from both sides of the lawsuit.

The Crown Heights Center did not return a request for comment.