A Fayette County woman has filed a federal class- and collective-action lawsuit against the operators of Kona Ice of the Bluegrass, the Richmond-based shaved-ice truck business, accusing them of cheating hourly workers out of overtime, denying them meal and rest breaks, and paying women less than comparable employees.

The complaint, filed May 28 in U.S. District Court in Lexington, names two companies — Seasonal Food Concepts Incorporated, which does business as Kona Ice of the Bluegrass, and Kona Ice of the Ville, LLC Co. — along with Richmond residents Thomas Scott Lamb and Lisa Dawn Lamb, who the suit says own and operate the local Kona Ice business. The named plaintiff, Angelina Harrison, says she worked for the operation as an hourly, non-exempt employee beginning around May 2023 and is suing on behalf of herself and all other similarly situated workers.

The lawsuit targets the local franchise operators, not Kona Ice's national parent company. Kona Ice is one of the country's largest food-truck franchises — founded in 2007 by Tony Lamb and headquartered in Florence, in Northern Kentucky, with roughly 2,200 trucks nationwide. That corporate franchisor is not named as a defendant, and the complaint makes no claims against it. The case concerns only the central-Kentucky operation run out of Richmond.

The wage-and-hour claims

At the heart of the case is what the complaint describes as a “wage theft, equal pay, and fraudulent payroll practices” operation. According to the filing, Kona employees including Harrison routinely worked more than 40 hours in a week but were not paid overtime at one and one-half times their regular rate, as federal and Kentucky law require.

The suit says workers were instructed, expected or permitted to work off the clock — preparing trucks, loading supplies, traveling to events, setting up equipment, breaking down events, cleaning and restocking — before and after the time they were recorded and paid for. The defendants, it alleges, “knew or should have known” the true hours worked because they controlled event schedules, truck assignments, arrival and closing times, and staffing.

The complaint goes further, alleging the company's incomplete payroll records were deliberate.

“Upon information and belief, the inaccurate payroll records were not accidental,” the complaint states, alleging the defendants “knowingly maintained incomplete, false, and misleading records to conceal the number of hours employees actually worked, to avoid paying overtime compensation, to conceal wage differentials, and to create the false appearance of compliance.”

‘Eat when you can’

The lawsuit also accuses the operators of denying workers legally required breaks. Instead of providing a duty-free meal period of at least 30 minutes, the complaint says, Kona management told employees to “eat when you can” — a policy the suit contends was not lawful under Kentucky law.

Workers also were not given the paid rest periods of at least 10 minutes for every four hours worked that Kentucky requires, the complaint alleges, leaving employees to keep serving customers, monitoring equipment and running operations during what should have been breaks.

Unequal pay allegations

Harrison alleges she and other female employees were paid less, required to work longer hours for less pay, and assigned worse working conditions than comparable employees performing substantially equal work. The wage gaps, the suit claims, were not based on seniority, merit, the quantity or quality of work, or any factor other than sex.

On that basis the complaint brings claims under the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Kentucky's equal-pay statute, KRS 337.423.

A 2024 warning letter, then alleged retaliation

According to the complaint, Harrison's lawyers put the company on written notice of the alleged violations in correspondence dated Nov. 26, 2024, identifying the overtime, recordkeeping, notice-posting, meal-and-rest-break and unequal-pay problems. The defendants, the suit says, “failed and refused to correct the unlawful practices or fully compensate” affected employees.

The lawsuit further alleges the company retaliated against Harrison after she raised concerns — constructively discharging her, cutting or eliminating her scheduled hours, removing her from events, denying her profitable shifts and harassing her. Both the Fair Labor Standards Act and Kentucky law bar employers from punishing workers for asserting wage-and-hour rights.

What the suit seeks

The complaint pleads six counts: violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Kentucky Wage and Hour Act, violations of the federal Equal Pay Act and Kentucky's equal-pay law, unlawful retaliation, and fraudulent concealment.

Harrison brings the federal wage claims as a “collective action,” in which other workers can opt in, and the state-law claims as a Rule 23 class action covering all current and former hourly, non-exempt employees of the operation since May 2023. The suit asks the court to order back wages and unpaid overtime, an equal amount in liquidated — effectively doubled — damages, back and front pay, pre- and post-judgment interest, attorneys' fees and costs, and an order requiring the company to preserve payroll records, time records and schedules. Harrison has demanded a jury trial.

The case

The case, Harrison v. Seasonal Food Concepts Incorporated et al., was assigned to U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom, with Magistrate Judge Matthew A. Stinnett referred for pretrial matters. Summonses were issued to all four defendants the day the suit was filed.

Harrison is represented by James M. Morris, Sharon K. Morris and Tyler J. Morris of Morris & Morris, P.S.C., a Lexington firm — the same firm that last month filed the federal lawsuit challenging the state's restructuring of Kentucky State University.

The defendants have not yet filed a response, and a complaint reflects only the plaintiff's side of a dispute. None of the allegations have been tested in court.

This article is based on the civil complaint filed in federal court. The complaint contains allegations the defendants have not yet answered and that have not been proven. All quoted material is taken directly from the filing. The lawsuit names the local Richmond-based Kona Ice operators; Kona Ice's national franchisor, based in Florence, is not a party to the case.