It’s official: the three class-action suits brought against Sony, Disney, DreamWorks Animation and other animation studios over alleged anti-poaching and wage-fixing agreements have been consolidated into a single suit, Deadline reports. Lawyers for digital artists David Wentworth, Robert Nitsch Jr. and Georgia Cano submitted an amended filing in federal court, which in part reads:
“The conspiracy deprived Plaintiffs and other class members of millions of dollars in compensation while the films they produced generated billions of dollars in revenues for Defendants,” and goes on to name DWA’s CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney-Pixar’s Ed Catmull and others as well as stating that DreamWorks’ Head of Production Technology reached out via email to HR heads at major studios to discuss comparative overtime payment policies — a sensitive issue in an industry where production schedules often demand employees work many, many overtime hours.
The case has been assigned to Judge Lucy Koh per plaintiff Nitsch’s request in September, which argued that his class-action complaint was “related” to the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation Koh had been presiding over for several years. Details of the animation studios’ anti-poaching agreements came to light during a Dept. of Justice investigation pertaining to the High-Tech case.
The consolidated amended class action complaint filing can be read in full here.
