Ring of Honor star Kelly Klein has filed a lawsuit against ROH and Sinclair Broadcasting for harassment, discrimination, among other allegations. Former WWE Superstar Joey Mercury is also following suit (no pun intended) over talent safety. Mercury was with ROH from May to October 2019, as he claimed to be an employee and not an independent contractor. Mercury claims he was forced to leave ROH over a “lack of concern for the talent”, along with “increased workload without commensurate increase in pay”.
Mercury said he devoted himself to improving and working on better salaries and conditions for the wrestlers involved with ROH. He spoke about the lack of safety protocols and medical supervision during matches put forth by ROH executives and Sinclair Broadcasting. He claims he did his best to secure talent reasonable compensation and that his work was disregarded by the defendants, which overall had created an unsafe working environment with poor working conditions and low morale.
The lawsuit by Mercury reads as follows:
“The general trend in Maryland has been to narrowly define ‘independent contractor’ and to protect employee access to unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation insurance, and other benefits. The Workplace Fraud Act, which became effective on October 1, 2009, makes it a violation to fail to properly classify workers as employees, and imposes penalties on those employers who knowingly misclassify their workers. LE § 9-402.1.”
This also references the “Recovery of Benefits and Penalties for Fraud Act,” which became effective on October 1, 2016. That act” imposes significant civil penalties” for misclassification of workers as independent contractors, which he claims he was not. The defendants, Mercury claims, kept the right to control every aspect of his job and “overrode his independent judgment” about how to perform his duties. They also had the right to terminate his job but wouldn’t allow him to do the same during his first six months. It was noted that “Sinclair and ROH retained the right to terminate the relationship for cause and imposed a restrictive covenant. The intent and import of the Agreement was to make Birch an employee while misclassifying him as an independent contractor.”
The lawsuit states that Mercury was in breach of contract and that he wanted royalties that (he felt) were owed to him. He made a final claim of “abusive discharge” that made several more additional claims on how ROH didn’t provide safe working conditions for the company:
* A divide between Mercury’s actions to keep workers safe and get them reasonable compensation and his forced resignation from the company.
* He routinely gave his opinions to the defendants about safety and inadequacy of pay only to get ignored.
* “COMAR 19.14.08.06(B) requires that the promoter shall be responsible for conducting wrestling contests in a safe, peaceable, and orderly fashion.”
* Sinclair and ROH didn’t conduct the matches in a safe manner, resulting in injuries to the wrestlers that were “not recognized and not addressed.”
* It notes that again, he was forced to resign as a result of all of this.
