Manhattan district court judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled Friday that Adam Klein, the owner of CMJ, and Abaculi Media, the company that currently owns CMJ Holdings, the once-renowned music publication and events organizer, must pay four former CMJ employees were entitled to recover $555,027.60, according to court documents filed Thursday.
The lawsuit originated in December 2016 by former general manager David Dekeyser and former social media manager Jessica Levy, who alleged that Abaculi stopped paying them in the fall of 2015. They also claimed that they were not paid for overtime, which would extend their workweeks to as much as 60 hours.
In addition to Dekeyser and Levy, two other former employees, Matthew McDonald and Douglas Sanders are part of the rewardees. Combining unpaid wages, liquidated damages, unreimbursed expenses and wage notice violations, Dekeyser was awarded $88,300, Levy $79,800, McDonald $173,200 and Sanders $213,700. The four are also entitled to attorneys’ fees and court costs.
In a separate suit, filed in December 2017, former CMJ director of business development Claudia Savino alleged similar nonpayment, alleging that Abaculi stopped paying her promised $150,000 per year salary regularly in December 2014, then stopped paying entirely in October 2015. She also similarly alleged non-payment of expenses and overtime. That case is not connected to the judgment announced yesterday.
Robert Haber founded College Media Journal in 1978 as a trade magazine, and the company organized the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City for 35 years. Its college radio charts were crucial to the development of independent and alternative music during the 80’s and 90’s, and even into the 2000s. The now-defunct organization dropped the festival in 2015 and stopped publishing its charts in 2017. Klein purchased CMJ in 2014.
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