The ruling in Timko v. NSPA Lounge LLC, No. 2:23-cv-1307, leaves Wyndham out of multiple counts in what the court described as a "rather expansive amended complaint." Judge Ranjan had previously issued a 48-page opinion addressing deficiencies in the original pleading.
On the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and Pennsylvania analog counts brought by plaintiff Stephanie Darnell, the court held the amended complaint lacked a predicate act. Darnell pleaded "document servitude" as the predicate, but Judge Ranjan wrote that the federal and state statutes criminalize destruction of travel and identification documents such as passports and government IDs.
"The amended complaint does not allege the destruction of any such travel or identification documents; it only alleges that Ms. Darnell's employer (the franchisee) failed to provide her with certain payment documents, like W-2 form and pay stubs," the court wrote. "There is no legal support to suggest that the criminal document-servitude statutes capture the withholding of simple wage documents."
In a footnote, the court rejected Darnell's alternative reliance on a Pennsylvania subsection covering the taking or retaining of an individual's "personal property or real property as a means of coercion," stating there is "no support to suggest that wage records generated by an employer are the employee's 'personal property.'" Without a predicate violation, the court said, "Ms. Darnell cannot hold Wyndham liable under the TVPRA or Pennsylvania trafficking statute."
The court dismissed the RICO conspiracy count because the pleading showed only constructive knowledge. "The amended complaint only goes so far as to allege that Wyndham should have known of the corrupt activities of its franchisees, not that it knew and made an agreement with the franchisees to violate RICO," Judge Ranjan wrote.
Plaintiff Anthony Robinson's Section 1981 race discrimination claim failed because Wyndham "was not Mr. Robinson's employer, and there is no plausible basis to suggest that it operated as a joint employer," the court held.
On the three unjust-enrichment counts, the court found the theory that Wyndham benefitted through royalties and franchise payments from franchisees that did not pay employees to be "remote or incidental, at best" and insufficient to state a claim under Pennsylvania law.
Judge Ranjan denied further leave to amend, writing that "further amendment would be futile and inequitable." The court cited Wyndham's observation that plaintiffs had filed a "sprawling" "29-Count, 823-paragraph, 143-page amended complaint" that exceeded the scope of prior leave to amend.