Posts Tagged ‘dancer’

Annals of Compensability: PT Stands for Pole Therapy?

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Christina Gamble worked at the family friendly Red Robin restaurant in Quakertown PA. She claimed to have fallen and hurt her back. She quit on the spot and went to work for Target, where she worked for two weeks. She filed a workers comp claim for the restaurant injury, which slowly wended its way through the Pennsylvania system until she was awarded benefits nearly a year after the initial injury. Gamble said she was unable to work because standing and changing positions was difficult. She collected over $20,000 in indemnity.
An anonymous tip sent investigators to C.R. Fanny’s Gentleman’s Club and Sports Bar in Easton, where Gamble worked out the kinks in her back by removing her clothing and writhing around a pole. C.R. Fanny’s (read the name aloud for full effect) is noted for its not-exactly highbrow entertainment such as applesauce and Jello wrestling, along with a “frozen thong contest” that is beyond the descriptive powers of this particular blog.
Gamble has been indicted for two counts of insurance fraud and theft by deception. She told investigators that she became an exotic dancer because she and her husband were under enormous financial pressures.
As is so often the case, a number of questions arise:

  • Why was the injury deemed compensable in the first place?
  • With Gamble quitting her job at the restaurant, did anyone at Red Robin or the insurance company pay any attention to this claim?
  • Did Gamble’s doctor attempt to test her physical mobility in any way – for example, using the unorthodox “sliding down the back of a chair” test?
  • Lastly, can Gamble find the proverbial Philadelphia lawyer to take her case, arguing, for example, that pole writhing might indeed be appropriate treatment for a gimpy back and that frozen thongs were an ingenious method of applying ice in the general vicinity of the injured body part?
  • Ms. Gamble should have followed immortal Will Rogers’s advice on gambling: “Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.” (I wonder what Will would have thought about AIG…)
    NOTE: Thanks to Pennsylvania reader Rick G. for the heads up on this story.

    Independent Contractors: The Bare Essentials

    Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

    The King Arthur Lounge in Chelsea, MA does not exactly bring to mind the Knights of the Round Table. It’s a tough place in a tough town – a strip joint with a motel attached (don’t ask, don’t tell). The strippers had to work under some pretty difficult conditions. They were hired as independent contractors. They paid a $35 fee for every shift. There were no wages, just customer tips. They provided their own (easily removable) costumes. When they moved to the darker regions of the bar and provided “private shows” (please don’t ask, don’t tell!), they had to turn over one third of their earnings to management.
    Jonathan Saltzman tells the story in the Boston Globe: About 70 strippers, led by Lucienne Chaves, a 32 year old former stripper, filed suit, alleging in a class action that they were not independent contractors, but employees entitled to minimum wages and benefits. Their lawyer, Shannon Liss-Riordan, compared the strippers to indentured servants: “They weren’t making any wage. Imagine a restaurant where a waiter has to pay to come to work and hand over a portion of the tips.”
    Robert Berluti, King Arthur’s lawyer, countered that some strippers made hundreds of dollars a shift. He argued that the strippers were truly independent contractors, picking their own music, costumes, partners and routines.
    Judge Frances McIntyre did not buy management’s argument. “A court would need to be blind to human instinct [indeed!] to decide that live nude entertainment was the equivalent to the wallpaper of routinely-televised matches, games…and sports talk in such a place. The dancing is an integral part of King Arthur’s business.” She went on to say that the club hired and fired strippers, determined their hours and made hiring decisions solely on looks. In other words, the strippers were employees.
    Mr. Berluti lamented the burden of overcoming Massachusett’s strict standards for independent contractors. “This was a case where the judge was saddled with a MA law that makes it an outlier with respect to the rest of the country.” Does Berluti really think the outcome would have been different if the law had been more ambiguous?
    Debt Collection
    The strippers have been awarded thousands of dollars in damages. It will be interesting to see if they can collect. As noted above, King Arthur’s Lounge is a tough place. Back in 1982, there was an argument between Alfred Mattuchio and an off-duty Everett MA police officer named John McLeod. The cop left the lounge and returned with several fellow officers, armed with nightsticks, baseball bats and tire irons. They attacked a dozen patrons and employees, one of whom was beaten to death. Four cops were indicted and three were convicted. The Insider wonders which, if any, of the King Arthur employees injured in the fracas collected workers comp.
    The chivalry of the original Round Table still lives in some places, but not, alas, in the dank recesses of King Arthur’s Lounge.