Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. and workers who say it forced them to skip meal and rest breaks must provide a federal judge with more information about a proposed settlement.

The settlement documents mistakenly identified the class as including approximately 118,000 workers when the real number is closer to 18,000, prompting the US District Court for the Eastern District of California to halt a hearing on the deal earlier this month.

Judge William B. Shubb threw out the workers’ allegations in January 2022 but allowed them to fix up their complaint and try again. The parties reached a settlement after the workers filed an amended complaint.

An attorney for the workers estimated the wage-and-hour claims’ maximum possible value at more than $35 million, Shubb said Tuesday. “Although counsel explains some of the assumptions used in certain calculations, the figures provided are largely conclusory,” according to the order.

The workers’ attorney estimated the claims’ realistic value—based on the beauty retailer’s potential arguments and defenses—at closer to $7.5 million, with an actual gross settlement amount of $1.5 million. But the lawyer didn’t “explain what calculations or reasoning were used to arrive at this figure,” other than pointing again to litigation risks, Shubb said.

The $1.5 million figure, which includes funds that will go toward attorneys’ fees...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZmh0dHBzOi8vbmV3cy5ibG9vbWJlcmdsYXcu...