Since 2001, Liss-Riordan, a partner in a modest-size law firm in downtown Boston, has brought at least 40 lawsuits on behalf of waiters, bartenders, and other service workers in Massachusetts who say their employers cheated them out of tips.
She took an obscure 1952 state law that protects tip-dependent workers, who can legally be paid less than minimum wage, and has used it to reap millions of dollars in awards and settlements. Lawyers outside Massachusetts have adopted her strategy, including the lawyers who recently won a $100 million award for baristas at Starbucks cafes in California.
A Harvard Law School graduate who helped found a feminist activist group in the early 1990s, Liss-Riordan originally wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. Instead, the Houston native has become something of an avenging angel for workers who rely on customers' generosity as they carry plates of sirloin and scrod, mix mojitos and martinis, and hoist luggage.
"It's hard work," Liss-Riordan, 38, said of such jobs. "It's physically tiring, it's stressful, and you have to be good dealing with people. They work hard for those tips, and part of the problem with the industry is a lot of managers and owners look at the tips and think, 'They shouldn't be making that much money.' So they want to take a piece of it, or subsidize their labor costs for other employees."
Read more here:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/04/29/skycaps_and_waiters_find_a_legal_champion/
