Viacom has agreed to pay $7.2 million dollars to settle a class-action intern lawsuit filed against the company in 2013.
According to court documents obtained by TheWrap, over 12,500 former interns are entitled to settlement checks totaling $505, before taxes, for each “traditional academic semester” that they spent interning at Viacom, but can claim no more than two.
The settlement agreed upon in January was defined on Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Casey Ojeda originally filed the lawsuit claiming Viacom owed interns wages and overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Ojeda claimed to have worked for the defendants from September 2011 to January 2012, typically three days a week for seven or eight hours a day. He performed tasks such as updating and rebooting the defendants’ mobile website, coding, creating weekly spreadsheets and program design without compensation, according to the complaint.
Viacom owns a number of TV networks, including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.