On February 1, 2024, Plaintiff model Jasmine Burgess (“Plaintiff”) settled her putative class and collective action lawsuit against Defendant Major Model Management, Inc. (“Major”) and Defendant agency owner Guido Dolci (“Dolci”) (collectively, “Defendants”) alleging misclassification of Major’s signed models as independent contractors.

The matter was settled by the parties on mutually agreeable terms, on an individual basis, primarily resulting in Major adopting historic NYC modeling agency prompt payment and pay transparency policies concerning payments to its models.

The potentially industry-shaping prompt payment and pay transparency policies became effective April 1, 2024, and continue until February 1, 2034.

As background, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint alleged that Major and agency owner Dolci had misclassified her, and other similarly situated signed models, as independent contractors, resulting in minimum wage violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), as well as minimum wage, recordkeeping, illegal deduction, and failure to pay earned wages claims in violation of the New York Labor Law (“NYLL”). The Amended Complaint further alleged that Defendants had retaliated against Plaintiff for amending her complaint to add class action allegations.

In approving the settlement at a hearing on February 1, 2024, United States District Court Judge Rochon held that the settlement provides “the equivalent of class-wide injunctive relief for all of Defendants’ models over the next ten years,” and that “[b]ecause the FLSA does not provide injunctive relief for private parties for wage-and-hour violations, this relief goes beyond any that Plaintiff could have recovered under FLSA had she gone to trial.”

Specifically, under the settlement agreement, beginning April 1, 2024 (unless otherwise specified) until February 1, 2034, for all models currently signed with Major or who sign with Major, Major will:

(1)  provide models with access to a smartphone application, which application will provide, within three business days of the date of payment receipt by Major, information on any and all payments concerning and/or relating to the models’ work, including, the client name, invoice number, invoiced amount (not including Major’s agency and/or service fee), the receipt of payment by Major, and the payment amount received by Major, concerning each payment to Major, including with respect to all bookings and usages;

(2)  provide payment to models for their modeling work, including for their bookings and usages, without any requirement or need for them to request payment from Major, within thirty calendar days of Major’s receipt of payment concerning or relating to their modeling work (unless the model opts out of such automatic payment pursuant to the procedure described in the settlement agreement or does not submit his/her payment information);

(3)  electronically notify Major models of their scheduling information concerning all bookings, castings, options, go-sees, or similar scheduling, concerning any modeling work assignments, and/or engagements, promptly after the scheduling and finalization of such, bookings, castings, options, and/or go-sees; and

(4)  beginning in 2025, within thirty days of the end of each calendar year, for each model receiving a 1099 form, either provide (A) access to a smartphone application, which application will provide a statement for the preceding calendar year showing: (1) all bookings and/or engagements that occurred in the prior calendar year, identified by the client name and invoice number; (2) the amount invoiced by Major for each such booking and/or engagement; (3) the date the invoice was sent to the client for each such booking and/or engagement; (4) the amount paid by the client for each such booking and/or engagement (not including agency and/or services fees); (5) the receipt of payment by Major from the client for each such booking and/or engagement; and (6) the date and amount of payment to each model for each such booking and/or engagement; or (B) an email of a statement prepared by Major containing the foregoing information.

A copy of the entire settlement agreement is available here.

Plaintiff model Jasmine Burgess said:

“The policy changes that Major Model Management, Inc. and Guido Dolci have agreed to implement over the next decade will ensure timely payments to Major’s models and provide access to an app that will promptly indicate whether the agency received payment for models’ work. I believe that these policy changes will make Major Model a future leader among NYC modeling agencies concerning model pay timeliness and transparency and will eventually set a new standard for model pay practices for all NYC modeling agencies. I am pleased that, after several years of hard-fought litigation, and despite Major’s bankruptcy filing and discharge, ultimately, the matter was settled by the parties on mutually agreeable terms.”

The case was Burgess v. Major Model Management, Inc. et al., 1:20-cv-02816-JLR-GWG, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York before United States District Judge Rochon and Magistrate Judge Gorenstein.

Media Contact: Cyrus Dugger, Esq., The Dugger Law Firm, PLLC (646) 560-3208 cd@theduggerlawfirm.com