Several former employees of Ruby Tequila's have filed a class action lawsuit to recover unpaid wages.
Jeff Blackburn, an attorney representing the unpaid employees, held a press conference yesterday in which he announced the lawsuit. In a post to Facebook, Blackburn wrote that the employees are suing Fired Up Holding Company, Inc., Richard Kevin Foote, Magdalena Baier, R Tequila Acquisition, LLC, Chalak Mitras Group, LLC, Gurdev Singh Gill, M.D. and Rajeev Singh Gill.
Sixty-three employees have joined the lawsuit, but it has been estimated that nearly four-hundred total employees were affected by the closures of the restaurants.
Blackburn said that this lawsuit is the first of its kind in Amarillo or Lubbock.
"This is a real historic step to defend workers' rights here and in the rest of the panhandle," Blackburn said, "I have never heard of one...I don't know of any case like this that has ever happened and I don't know of any case like this that has ever been filed."
In the press conference, Blackburn echoed that this case is important for workers rights and he stressed the importance of the case's outcome.
"We're coming to get the people who did this to these workers," Blackburn said, "We're going to get them and we're not going to give up until we do."
Jeremi Young, attorney at Young & Newsom, is also representing employees in the case. During the press conference, Young also said that the case is beyond proportion to anything ever seen in Amarillo.
"This is a widespread catastrophe that is striking the lives of many people." Young said.
