St Paul MN Dec 29 2021 The Minnesota Supreme Court issued an opinion earlier this week that will allow the Minnesota Attorney General’s investigation into alleged wage theft at Madison Equities — the largest property owner in downtown St. Paul — to move forward.

Security guards at U.S. Bank Center, the First National Bank Building, 375 Jackson St. and four other downtown properties have alleged they were not paid time-and-one-half overtime rates when they worked at multiple locations. Instead, over the course of 16-hour workdays, they were allegedly ordered to clock out from one building and clock into another, as if they were starting a new shift for a different employer.

The complaints triggered an investigation by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office in August 2019. After interviewing at least six current or former security guards, the office’s wage theft division opened a civil investigation into whether overtime practices violated state and federal law, but the employer declined to comply with requests for pertinent information and failed to hand over employee payroll records.

Instead, Madison Equities responded to the attorney general’s civil investigative demand at the time by calling it overly broad and filing a motion for a protective order, which sought to quash it.

Kelly Hadac, an attorney for Madison Equities, said in a 2019 filing that his client owns property through 30 or 40 separate legal entities, or limited liability corporations, none of which can be considered joint employers. Handing over records from all the entities would require hundreds of manhours, he said, and he noted Ellison’s office had sought records for maintenance workers, and “workers” in general, even though no maintenance workers had come forward to complain about overtime pay.

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