Lawsuit Against Sutter Alleges Wage Underpayment
A lawsuit has been filed against Sutter Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice for alleged underpayment of employee wages. The suit claims the company failed to accurately record employees' full work time, including off-the-clock hours. The case highlights the critical importance of compliant and accurate payroll and time-tracking systems for employers.
- The class action lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court (Case No. 25CV029700), alleges that Sutter Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice violated multiple sections of the California Labor Code. - Specific allegations include failing to provide legally required 30-minute meal periods and paid 10-minute rest breaks, which are mandated for non-exempt employees in California based on shift length. - The complaint also claims that the company underpaid sick leave by calculating it at the base rate of pay instead of the legally required regular rate of pay. - This is not the only recent legal challenge for this specific Sutter entity; in January 2025, a former hospice physician filed a lawsuit alleging he was wrongfully terminated for raising concerns about fraudulent patient care practices. - The law firm representing the employees, Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, specializes in employment law and has filed numerous similar wage and hour lawsuits against other companies. - Parent company Sutter Health has faced other significant labor-related legal actions, including an $8 million settlement in a separate wage and hour class action lawsuit involving non-exempt hospital employees that was finalized in September 2024. - Wage theft is a persistent issue in the healthcare industry, often linked to practices like automatic break deductions, unpaid overtime for charting or shift changes, and misclassification of employees to avoid paying overtime. - In a separate landmark case that concluded in 2021, Sutter Health paid a $575 million settlement to resolve allegations of anticompetitive practices that led to inflated healthcare costs in Northern California.
