Kane Dane
Incident
PUMP -Lisa Vanderpump’s TV-star bar and restaurant, and Ken Todd, are sued by a former employee, who says they do not adequately pay their employees.
Adam Pierce Antoine, whose lawyers ask the Judge to appoint him as a class action matter, which can include up to 50 PUMP employees, filed the lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court last month.
The Lawsuit
In the lawsuit, Antoine makes several allegations, including that PUMP, has not paid employees the salaries due, including overtime, for at least four years. Antoine further alleges that PUMP has failed, in compliance with legislation, to provide workers with breaks of at least 10 minutes for every four hours that they work. He also claims that the PUMP has falsified pay records for employees.
The lawsuit was brought against Pinky Beverly Hills LLC, the company under the control of Vanderpump and Todd, by lawyers of Antoine, David Bibiyan, and Diego Aviles of the Bibiyan Law Group. The Vanderpump and Todd have also owned Sur, a restaurant on Robertson Boulevard, with staff featured in “Lisa Vanderpump Rules,” a Bravo reality TV show which began in “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” after Vanderpump’s appearance. TomTom was also opened in 2018, and a bar named after Sur’s staff Tom Sandoval, and Tom Schwartz was also featured in “Vanderpump Rules.”
Previous Lawsuits
This is not Vanderpump and Todd’s first lawsuit. In June 2014, in Los Angeles. Superior Court jury decided that the couple should pay a compensatory loss of $6,250 and a punitive loss of $100,000 to their Beverly Hills restaurant employee Villa Blanca, who alleged a restaurant assistant manager physically attacked her. The judge also ordered Vanderpump and Todd and their firms to pay the employee $1,49 million in legal fees. A food supplier also sued the restaurant for not paying his bill.
And, in 2013, former employees of The Abbey and SBE Entertainment Group, Andrew Gruver and Ryan Carrillo sued the master of the PUMP property, Vanderpump, Todd, and Elie Samaha. They claimed that he would invest $500,000 in a sports bar, which he hoped to open at 8948 Santa Monica Blvd. in May 2014, when PUMP opened. The suit says that Samaha rented the master property, formerly the home of the coffee bar Java Detour.
Gruver and Carrillo alleged that not only did Samaha not uphold its pledge to invest, but it also turned around and leased a house to Vanderpump and her boyfriend, Ken Todd, after signing an agreement for $4,000 a month to rent the land.
PUMP has not replied to WEHOville’s request for a comment on the complaint since its publication.
