A Richmond jury this week awarded a total of more than $150,000 in unpaid wages to 32 construction workers in a case against property owner Oliver Lawrence.
The total judgment against Lawrence and his Bayou Properties was $237,009 and includes $153,775 in unpaid wages, $7,588 for confiscated equipment belonging to the workers, plus interest and lawyers' fees, said the plaintiffs' attorney, Gray Broughton.
The jury reached its verdict yesterday after a three-day trial in Richmond Circuit Court.
According to Broughton and his complaint filed in the court, Lawrence hired the plaintiffs to work on a dozen buildings from January through May of 2007, promising to pay each worker between $130 and $200 per day.
The workers had stored some of their construction equipment and scaffolding inside one of the buildings. In May 2007, the workers were locked out of that building after complaining that they had not been paid, preventing them from retrieving their equipment, according to the complaint.
Lawrence's attorney, Fred A. Dixon, argued that the workers were not employees of Bayou, although one of them was hired as an independent contractor to perform some services for the company. Dixon also argued that the question of whether the Hispanic workers were legally eligible to work in the United States was relevant to the case.
"Establishment of proper standing is a prerequisite for the bringing of any action in the courts of this commonwealth," Dixon wrote in response to the plaintiffs' motion to exclude such evidence.
Circuit Judge Margaret P. Spencer did not allow the defendants to introduce evidence at the trial about the plaintiffs' immigration status or eligibility to work in the United States. She agreed with the plaintiffs' argument that such evidence would be prejudicial. Broughton said he did not know whether his clients had been working illegally and did not ask them.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs had sought a total of about $317,000 in unpaid wages.
"They did hard, back-breaking work for Bayou Properties and Oliver Lawrence and deserved to be compensated accordingly," Broughton said after the trial. "The jury recognized the value of their hard work in its verdict."
Efforts to reach Lawrence and his attorney yesterday were unsuccessful.
In August 2007, the city of Richmond served Lawrence with about 170 violations on buildings he owned, and he has since resolved those issues, said city spokesman Michael Wallace. At the time, he was one of the city's largest vacant-property holders.
The violations pertained to about 35 to 40 buildings of an estimated 150 owned by Lawrence. About 100 of the buildings were considered by city officials to be vacant and unoccupied, including several properties that were badly damaged by suspicious fires that year.
Four of the properties the plaintiffs worked on had been damaged by fire, Broughton said. Those fires are still under investigation, said Richmond fire Lt. Shawn L. Jones.
Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or rwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
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