GILROY
– Claiming he and his fellow workers deserved 60 days notice
before being laid off Sept. 19, a former Indian Motorcycle employee
filed a class-action lawsuit against the company last week on
behalf of its entire 380-person former workforce.
GILROY – Claiming he and his fellow workers deserved 60 days notice before being laid off Sept. 19, a former Indian Motorcycle employee filed a class-action lawsuit against the company last week on behalf of its entire 380-person former workforce.
Russel Frost, of Hollister, a former quality-control inspector at Indian, filed the lawsuit in Santa Clara County Superior Court and is seeking 60 days’ pay and benefits for each person Indian laid off when Indian closed its Gilroy headquarters on Sept. 19.
Bill Marder, a lawyer with the Hollister firm that helped Frost file the suit, said it’s up to a judge to certify the lawsuit’s class-action status – that is, whether it will represent all the laid-off employees or just Frost. If the suit is successful as a class-action matter, any money reaped from Indian would be distributed evenly among the laid-off employees, Marder said.
Indian Chairman Frank O’Connell said last week that Indian was exempt from state and federal laws that require 60-day advance notice of mass layoffs – in California, when more than 50 employees are let go at once – because the company didn’t have the money to keep operating at the time of the sudden shutdown.
“That’s what nearly all employers claim” in such circumstances, Marder said. The burden of proof, however, is on Indian, and Marder said he thinks this burden will prove “very difficult for them.”
