A contestant on the second season of Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” reality series is suing the streamer and the show’s producers, charging them with a string of labor-law violations, including fostering “inhumane working conditions”Paying cast members less than the minimum wage
The lawsuit was filed by Jeremy Hartwell. “Love Is Blind” producers plied the cast with alcohol and deprived them of food and water — while paying them less than minimum wage. In the suit filed in California Superior Court, L.A., Netflix, Kinetic Content, and Delirium TV are named as defendants.
Reps from Kinetic and Netflix did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Hartwell is the director of a Chicago-based mortgage company. Hartwell claims that he spent many days recovering from the effects sleep deprivation, insufficient access to food and water, and excessive alcohol consumption.
According to the lawsuit “Love Is Blind”California state law should have made contestants employees, not independent contractors. This was because they were able to dictate the time, method and manner of their work. During the production, producers paid contestants a flat rate of $1,000 per week — despite forcing them to work up to 20 hours per day, seven days per week. According to the complaint, that’s $7.14 an hour. That’s well below the Los Angeles County minimum wage of $15 per hour.
Produced by the show “intentionally underpaid the cast members, deprived them of food, water and sleep, plied them with booze and cut off their access to personal contacts and most of the outside world. This made cast members hungry for social connections and altered their emotions and decision-making,”Chantal Payton, attorney at Payton Employment Law (L.A.-based) is the one representing Hartwell.
Hartwell’s suit seeks class-action status on behalf of all participants in “Love Is Blind”and any other non-scripted productions that the defendants have made over the past four year. Payton Employment Law projects that the plaintiff class could be more than 100 people.
According to Hartwell’s suit, the contracts required contestants to agree that if they left the show before filming was done, they would have to pay $50,000 in “liquidated damages.”The lawsuit claims that members of reality TV casts were involved in the lawsuit “either have a genuine fear of retaliation and harm to their reputation for any resistance to the orders of those holding the purse strings or they aren’t aware of their rights.”
According to Payton’s attorneys, he said: “Reality show production and casting companies exert a lot more control over the contestants than the law allows for a worker to truly be considered an independent contractor, especially in shows where cast members are supposedly searching for love.”
Kinetic Content is also available “Love Is Blind,”Reality shows are also produced “The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On,”This year, it was available on Netflix. “Married at First Sight,”The show, which was first aired on Lifetime in 2014, is now available for streaming on Netflix.
In “Love Is Blind,”Contestants meet their dates at separate locations “pods”You can communicate through your speakers with each other, but you are not able to see each other. The contestants must become engaged before they can meet face to face. This could lead to either a live televised marriage or a one-day divorce. “Love Is Blind”It has been nominated to an Emmy Award, and has also spawned versions in Brazil and Japan.
“The combination of sleep deprivation, isolation, lack of food, and an excess of alcohol all either required, enabled or encouraged by defendants contributed to inhumane working conditions and altered mental state for the cast,” reads Hartwell’s complaint. “At times, defendants left members of the cast alone for hours at a time with no access to a phone, food, or any other type of contact with the outside world until they were required to return to working on the production.”
Hartwell’s lawsuit seeks unpaid wages plus, financial compensation for missed meal breaks and rest periods, plus unspecified monetary damages for unfair business practices and civil penalties for labor code violations.
The suit was filed at the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles on June 29. 22STCV1223.