Getty Images, Expedia, and several other employers with operations in Seattle are being sued by workers who allege that the companies violated the city’s wage theft law by not reimbursing them for expenses incurred while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A total of seven lawsuits have been filed over the past three months in King County Superior Court in Seattle by Tacoma, Wash.-based attorney Julian Hammond, representing individual workers and seeking class action status for hundreds of current and former employees of the companies.
For example, the suit against Getty Images, filed July 12 on behalf of a former subscription specialist and a former senior technical recruiter, alleges that the company “required and/or expected Plaintiffs and Class Members to provide their own remote work offices, and to provide internet connectivity, phone service, equipment and/or office supplies, and utilities at their own expense.”
One of the first cases was filed in May against Seattle-based sales software company Highspot on behalf of an executive assistant at the company. Court records show that the case was dismissed in early June under a joint stipulation by the employee and the company. Highspot declined to comment.
Other employers facing lawsuits over the issue in King County Superior Court are Egencia (a former Expedia Group company that is now part of American Express Global Business Travel), US Foods Holdings Corp., Seattle Pacific University and Seattle University.
The lawsuits seek reimbursement, interest, and additional financial damages.
Although the suits represent an unusual application of Seattle’s municipal wage theft law, they’re part of a pattern of litigation across the country over unreimbursed expenses from remote work.
In one high-profile case, a federal judge in California in March declined to certify a class action suit against Amazon over the issue, saying that there weren’t sufficient commonalities among the thousands of impacted workers to form the basis for a class of plaintiffs.
Representatives of Getty Images and Expedia Group declined to comment on the litigation. Hammond, the lawyer who has filed each of the suits, was not available for comment prior to publication.
