On June 4, Sprint settled a class-action lawsuit with thousands of sales employees. Sprint settled for $3.65 million on a class-action lawsuit that has been going on for over nine years in the US District Court of Kansas City, Kansas. Back in May 2008, almost four thousand Sprint business channel sales employees filed this suit against Sprint. The argument was the fact that Sprint failed to pay commissions they were owed after merging with Nextel. The employees said that the system Sprint was using was not able to track commissions and pay data for several years. Of course, Sprint is still continuing to deny these allegations.
This was a pretty long lawsuit for Sprint and these employees, and while the employees did ultimately end up winning, it is a pretty small settlement. Just $3.65 million. After paying off the lawyers that argued the case, the employees involved here likely won’t receive much money from this class-action lawsuit, and that is typically the case with these class-action lawsuits anyways. Usually those involved only get a check for a few bucks. According to court documents, the employees will receive around $25 for this case. About $1.9 million goes to the nearly four thousand employees, while the remainder goes to paying the lawyers (around $839,600) and litigation costs (around $850,000).
Sprint isn’t the only one that has been in a good number of lawsuits as of late. All four of the US carriers have had their own fair share of lawsuits lately, and a number of them were due to business practices that were not in favor of its customers. Though Sprint is the first one to really have its employees file a lawsuit against them. A nine-year lawsuit is definitely a long one, and it’s possible that many of these employees have left Sprint for many years already. While the $25 class-action lawsuit check likely won’t make up for the lost money, it is better than nothing here.