Beaver Creek workers intervene in Vail Resorts labor lawsuit in California, file motion to dismiss
John LaConte/Vail Daily
Current and former Beaver Creek workers Randy Dean Quint, John Linn and Mark Molina have intervened in a lawsuit in which workers have sued Vail Resorts in California state court, saying the case should be heard in federal court in Colorado where the company is headquartered.
The Beaver Creek workers, on Friday, filed a motion to dismiss the California case.
“This case was filed months after the Colorado Plaintiffs filed the first nationwide collective and class action on behalf of all current and former hourly employees of Vail Resorts, Inc., in the District of Colorado where Vail is headquartered,” the motion states. “And since the Federal Action is the first-filed action to assert claims under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the laws of nine states where Vail operates there is a strong presumption that the claims should be adjudicated in Colorado federal court.”
The Beaver Creek plaintiffs were allowed to intervene into the California case following a ruling from California’s Third Appellate District, in October, which ruled that the original judge on the case, Judge Michael McLaughlin, erred in telling the plaintiffs that they could not intervene in the case.
A new judge was assigned to the case following that ruling.
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Both the Beaver Creek workers’ federal case in Colorado and the state court case in California allege that Vail Resorts committed numerous Fair Labor Standards Act violations over the course of several years.
The allegations include unpaid hours and overtime, necessary equipment and expenses not being reimbursed, and other violations. All Vail Resorts workers who were employed with the company since 2017 and believe they have not been properly compensated or reimbursed were eligible to join either the Colorado suit or the California suit.
The California suit reached a settlement in 2022 — $13.1 million for a class that could include more than 100,000 workers. After the more than $4 million in attorneys’ fees was subtracted from the total, the workers would have been left with “pennies on the dollar,” the Beaver Creek plaintiffs argued in attempting to intervene in the case. Those plaintiffs appealed not just the denied motion to intervene, but the settlement itself, winning both appeals.
The court ruled that the California plaintiffs had a significant incentive to settle with defendants to overcome the lack of general jurisdiction that they had in the case, and that they had “a diminished bargaining position,” due to that lack of jurisdiction.
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Because Vail Resorts is headquartered in Broomfield, the case is subject to general jurisdiction in federal court in Colorado, the appellants argued.
“This litigation belongs in the District of Colorado,” the Beaver Creek workers argued in the motion filed Friday. “There is no question that the District of Colorado has by far the strongest interest in the claims, particularly relative to a remote California state court.”
