Legal Analysis: MrBeast Sued for Allegations Over Beast Games

[00:00:00]so Mr Beast is being sued and we're going to go through the court documents together however we're going to have to do a lot of reading between the lines and specifically I mean the big blacked out lines because this is heavily redacted I found this PDF originally via a news organization and I thought man they butchered the heck out of this so I paid the money and pulled the actual documents from the court and that's what's been released is this version that's been very heavily redacted but we can figure out a fair bit from it so let's Dive Right In Mr Beast you probably have already heard of he is quite likely the world's biggest YouTuber he's tremendously famous tremendously wealthy and he is being sued as is his company and Amazon and several others by contestants one through five this is with regards to the Mr Beast games and they're Pro they're proposing to launch this as a class action on behalf of all individuals who are engaged as reported contestants in the Beast games content production in blank now there's a lot of things that are blanked and I'm not sure why they decided to blank out that particular thing it doesn't seem super private but that's going to be a bit of a theme here okay so who are they suing well first they're suing mrb 2024 LLC which is a a production company that Mr Beast owns and uses to run his stuff that's the allegation here they note the Mr Beast entertainment Empire produces stunt philanthropy which typically features Mr Beast performing uh corporate sponsored attention getting philanthropy for publicity the business model essentially is that Mr Beast performs giving away some corporate money whether pallets of cash cars or even houses to strangers or followers um famously he's also given away things like eye surgeries and so forth and his corporate sponsors compensate him with even more corporate money that's also the business model of like game shows in general so yeah it's not surprising that he's not running these things at a loss but this is uh this is court filings so you try to kind of shade things as much as you can um I'm not sure that they're doing a great job of making them sound bad here but let's keep going defend an Amazon alternative so Amazon is pretty much exactly who you expect effect they do Amazon films uh next we have Mr Donaldson that is Mr Beast himself and yes what is the issue here well they say defendants knowingly misclassified the contestants in part to obtain a tax credit for 2,252 523 from the state of Nevada that's more money than I've ever seen in my life but they've got that as a tax credit which defendants on information and belief would not have received if they had disclosed the production's actual labor costs including the significant labor of the contestants there's blanks in there for reasons I don't know in the budget they presented to the Nevada film commission with their tax credit application so first there are issues here with regards to how they're filing this there's also issues with regards to whether they're providing Fair wages or even bare minimum legal working conditions to the blank contestants whose labor comprised the core commercial value of Beast games instead defendants employed Superior bargaining power to coers the contestants to sign unconscionable contracts with illegal terms and ucer obligations and no also knowingly mischaracterized the contestants to avoid defendants employment obligations under California law okay so this is all a lot of this is going to hinge on whether or not these people are actual employees versus whether they are contractors and why that's significant is that there's different labor protections that apply to employees versus things that apply to contractors if you hire somebody to mow your lawn just as a oneoff you're not required to provide them with you know health insurance or tax forms or any of this stuff right because they're just somebody doing doing a job job for you once but if you've got if you're say a golf course and you've got a dedicated person on staff whose job it is to keep the Lawns mode then that person is an employee and you have to do certain other things to sort of manage that employment relationship employees typically have more protections than contractors so in this a big issue is going to be are these people employees of Mr Beast and Mr Beast production and so forth or are they just contractors okay let's uh let's have a look at more things in this lawsuit here because there's a lot to it so defendants then induced blank to serve as contestants on their hundred million production that's probably their names that was blanked out based on a false representation that 1,000 people would be competing to win a $5 million prize announcing only upon the contestants arrival blank I'm guessing that something like that there were 10,000 people or something like that reducing the contestants odds of winning blank before the competition began now the reason why this is a problem is that if you induce somebody to do a thing based on a promise and that promise turns out not to be true then that can be fraudulent so defendants further relied on the misclassification as a false justification to avoid avoid paying employment taxes and to spare the production the cost of implementing various employment protections required under California law including minimum wages overtime mandatory meal and rest breaks workers compensation benefits itemized wage statements and timely payment of wages and reimbursements among other things they also go on to say defendants then subjected the contestants to unreasonable unsafe and unlawful employment conditions on blank defendants began the Beast games by blank where contestants were held under strict control contr and surveillance for days on end lengthy blank so they're saying something bad happened to them but we don't know what that is during the Beast games engagement the on the onset production staff maintained the strictest control over the contestants blank denying them all privacy and access to the outside world the contestants were fed sporadically and sparsely they were not given adequate access to hygienic products or medical care the New York Times reported that over a dozen people who participated in the first installment of Beast games said they had not received adequate food or medical care and that some competitors had suffered injuries from the physical challenges they go on and we can read a little bit between the lines here because I I have some suspicions as to what this probably says the female contestants particularly and collectively suffered as a result of defendants actions the Beast games work environment systematically fostered a culture of misogyny and sexism where production staff did nothing while blank now this might be allegations of harassment it might be allegations that go beyond that to physical contact or something like that we just don't know female contestants were also denied blank now I don't know for certain what that says but I'm guessing it connects to hygienic products that'll be my my bet if I had to guess as to what's hidden under the mystery box here defendants callously dismissed blank we're not getting a lot here I expect that more information will come out but this is um this is interesting how much is redacted defendants violation of California law have caused common injuries in fact that are redressable and conducive to resolution as a class action these are things that they're noting for the purposes of saying that it is a class action that there's actual damages here and that um Everybody suffered actual damages that are common among the class where all of the following material facts are common to all contestants defendants offered the contestants equivalent compensation for equivalent labor defendants misclassified the contestants in a uniform manner defendants subjected all of the contestants to the same material working conditions including a hostile work environment for the female fale contestants defendants have improperly denied or delayed the contestants overdue wages penalties and/or reimbursements the plaintiffs have filed this action using pseudonyms and applying conservative redactions that limit public viewing in a goodfaith effort to comply with defendants over Brad confidentiality Provisions which plaintiffs allege are unenforceable as well as to preserve the confidentiality and privacy interest of the plaintiffs who wish to avoid appr proprium so they're saying the reason why this is redacted to heck is a they want to ensure that they don't get um that they don't get grief from the public and Mr Beast has got a lot of fans and some of his fans might go oh these are bad allegations I feel bad for these people but some of those fans might instead go oh screw these people for coming after Mr Beast let's go harass them and don't do that that's not cool that's not okay but they're saying we're trying to protect that I don't know that they're going to be able to uh persevere on using pseudonyms for that reason but they're filing it at the start with that effort now the next problem they're running into is uh they're saying we're redacting everything because there's these confidentiality Provisions that we don't want to break I hope that gets lifted because normally we have open courts um the open court rules sort of are to ensure that we all know what's being litigated what the issues are in cases so that we understand the world around us and that our rights to sort of know these things and speak about them is protected this seems way over broad all right jurisdiction and venue they basically say Los Angeles because this is where stuff happened and where some of the people live contestants um yeah we can skip over the contestants and the parties we've already gone over that so facts now here these are of course allegations nothing has been proven but let's talk about what is being suggested here so a the contestants engage in what appeared to be a thorough application and vetting process for Beast games that said they're going to say you didn't do enough vetting the contestants who were selected and agreed to serve as contestants on The Beast games 2024 production participated in what at the time appeared to be a thorough application and contestant vetting process the first step in the application process was to submit something um we're g to just go with a live goat um that seems like an unnecessary redaction but they've already said why once accepted blank the contestants were required to put their lives on hold blank to provide labor exclusively for defendants in exchange for compensation and a chance to win a five $5 million prize on Beast games the contestants incurred supposedly reimbursable business travel expenses for which many including contestant 2 and contestant 3 have not yet been reimbursed so what they're saying here is we you know everyone who competed was required to like take leaves of absence from their job or quit their job or not take other employment they had to be available 100% for this which of course means the need money also if they had to pay to fly out there then and they were if they were promised that they'd get that money back that's that's real money right the contestant agreements uh that contestants entered into with production defendants included blank what is blank we don't know um we're just going to put a live goat for every blank here um the contestants each entered into a blank um contestant agreement in which the contestants agreed that something so this is not super helpful when they just tell us oh they agreed to something you know we're trying to determine if this is a good lawsuit here but we don't know uh the contestants were employees under California law but defendants intentionally misclassified them to defendants economic Advantage now it is very very common labor lawyers will tell you this all the time I'm not a labor lawyer but a lot of the time there are issues around the classification of a potential employee we'll see this in lawsuits with like Uber Eats and so forth where they're saying wait I I'm an employee and the company says no you're just a contractor there's a different rule here it's generally cheaper to have a contractor than an employee because you don't have to provide them with all the stuff that you have to provide employees so there's a lot of push to try to say hey this person is a contractor instead of an employee and because of that the law actually specifies various things to say it doesn't just matter what's in your contract or what's in your agreement but it actually matters the nature of the relationship how these two individuals or how these two entities the person versus the company how do they actually relate to each other in practice because if they actually treat each other if this agreement is akin to an employment relationship even if you decide to call it a contractual relationship not going to be good enough so that's really where this is going so defendants wrongfully and willfully misclassified and on information and belief continue to wrongfully misclassify the contestants I'm guessing as contractors although they should legally be classified as employees the contestant agreement states on its face that the contestants blank but the arrangement I'm guessing that's still our contractors but the arrangement was in fact an employment Arrangement whereby defendants Amazon one uh off one's base and Mr Beast were the actual employers of the contestant employees so how do we get there well one the contestants were not volunteers the contestants were promised and received compensation in exchange for their services why does it matter that they're not volunteers well because volunteers don't typically classify as employees um and it this makes sense right because if you've got somebody who's volunteering at the soup kitchen you know just as a charitable Endeavor it doesn't make sense that this volunteer at the soup kitchen has to be paid a minimum wage for example that you know that changes it from a volunteer to an employee right so here they're saying no they're not volunteers because they were promised payment so on information and belief each of the defendants is a for-profit company in the business of making audiovisual programming including for distribution on YouTube and Amazon Prime video I.E they're not Charities right these this is not the soup kitchen the contestants were promised and received compensation in exchange for their work on the Beast games production additionally Mr Donaldson made public statements online that he had unconstrained control over Beast games and Donaldson had established a pattern and practice of compensating everyone who competes in the Mr Beast uh prod or competitions win or lose even if they competed for only five minutes I don't know that that's necessarily going to carry the day here that he had a pattern in practice of what he'd done in Prior competitions like if your agreement didn't say you're getting paid uh okay um this suggests a weakness in the lawsuit to me the contestants were not working for free for the Beast games for any humanitarian or any other public service or charitable objective defendants hired the contestants to work as contestants on a reality competition show the contestants in reality were the essential labor component to the entire production their work on the show was the entertainment product that the defendants were marketing and selling for public consumption and profit so again what I'm not seeing here is that they were promised pay we'll we'll see right um the contestants were told that if they accepted the opportunity to work for defendants they would have to be available for I'm guessing it's whenever they might be called for this period And while they were working for defendants they would not be able to accept any other employment defendants compensated the contestant throughout the course of the Beast game's production with both in-kind compensation as well as cash compensation with defendants promising blank to every contestant that blanked the redactions here are really not helping throughout the Beast game's engagement the contestants were induced to remain competing as defendants made clear to all contestants that blank so this might be a promise of Promise of payment right defendants have since requested and plaintiffs have provided blank from the contestants to pay them and also to reimburse them for expenses contestants two and three have to date still not been reimbursed for outof pocket expenses they incurred for blank so this says hey they promised they'd pay back you know travel costs and whatever else they didn't do that where's our money money as a result of the combination of the foregoing the contestants cannot properly be characterized blank so I'm guessing it's as contractors rather they were at all relevant times employees who worked at the direction and control of each of the defendants and for these defendants ultimate profit so again that is to hit the base of they are employees rather than contractors the contestants had no autonomy defendants exercised complete control so defendants exercise total control over the manner means and timing of the work performed by contestants by controlling essentially every aspect of their lives during the production of the show this included but is not limited to requiring blank controlling blank controlling blank controlling blank preventing them blank controlling blank and directing blank um not super useful but why does this matter well let's say I hire a painting company to paint my house um I might be able to specify like I am paying you to use this grade of paint in this color and so forth but what I can't do if I'm hiring this painting company is I can't hire and Fire individual painters um I can't uh tell them like what color of ladder to use or what brand of ladder to use or any of these things they get a lot of control over how they do the painting right they've agreed that they will paint these surfaces in this way but I can't tell them like when they can take their breaks or those kinds of things that's just that's their decision so that level of autonomy is something that suggests a like an independent contractor relationship whereas by contrast if I've hired somebody as my employee um I might be able to tell them when they can take their breaks I might be able to tell them like what uniform they have to wear um these kinds of things right so that suggests more of an employment relationship so when and where defendants required the contestants to be physically present on specific dates and times around the clock at locations dictated controlled and supervised by defendants and which dates and locations blank defendants further required plaintiffs dedicate all of their time to the production during the production period blank requiring them to miss other work if they had other jobs defendants also purport to control blank so they're saying they controlled a lot of things access to personal belongings upon the contestants arrival at the Beast games blank now we can read a lot between lines here I am pretty sure that when they showed up all of their stuff was probably put into a locker and they weren't allowed access to it and that kind of makes sense if you're running some big elaborate production because the last thing you want is you're running some sort of contest and it turns out somebody pulls out you know um pulls out Mr stabby and you're like wait a minute our game show does not involve Like a Knife that that is not a thing so so um that makes sense right um you you don't want that uh restricted movement defendants coralled the contestants into tightly controlled blank where they were actively supervised by production staff Around the Clock without any privacy so again that doesn't really suggest an independent contractor no contact defendants exercise total control over the contestants blank I'm guessing that meant that they couldn't like phone home or call A friend or anything like that um control over meals the defendants controlled when where and what the contestants blank I'm guessing that's a lengthy meaning of eight The Limited sustenance that defendants provided afforded an unreasonable and insufficient caloric intake which collectively and in a uniform manner endangered the Health and Welfare of the contestants that's not cool right um if you're not providing enough food for people and you're expecting them to run around and play a game uh that is not great uh during their time the contestants had to suffer through blank when defendants allowed the contestants to have food blank okay now there are some game shows around lack of food you know if you're doing some survival contest or whatever but again that suggests a high level of control control over clothing remember how I mentioned uniforms well defendants controlled the the clothing that contestants wore blank one day defendants coralled the contestants blank with a picture blank control over sleeping Arrangements defendants controlled where how and whether the contestants slept contestants were filed into blank where they slept overnight in blank although contestant for blank which included blank so a lot of they're basically saying hey they were managing our sleep they were managing all of these other sorts of things so again trying to establish an employment relationship control over medications and recreational substances now to me this is a hell of a thing to lump together right medications sure recreational substances what okay because one of them seems a lot more reasonable to control right hey you can't do any drugs or alcohol while you're participating in this makes sense um but saying like you can't have your insulin or you know your heart medication is a very different scenario so upon their arrival defendants separated the contestants blank defendants did not allow the contestants to blank okay that could be reasonable it could be entirely not exposed to dangerous conditions so this is another basis of suit here the contestants were exposed to dangerous circumstances and conditions as a condition of their employment even cons without considering whatever confidential conditions existed behind closed doors while the Beast games were being filmed the contestants were subjected to dangerous conditions within the course of their employment as local news reported many contestants found it was the poor set conditions rather than the challenges themselves that proved to be the main difficulty the contestants were penned into enclosed spaces with blank under conditions where they were underfed over tired and competing in stressful and exhausting challenges for a cash prize that could change their lives the danger moreover was exacerbated by defendants seeming failure to conduct background checks and they give us a little example with a Twitter post and it might be hard to read on your screen so I'll read it out uh this is from rosan Pansino saying I've received confirmation from five verified contestants interestingly there's five contestants suing wondering if that there's any overlap that for the first round of Beast games a man named Armani is iadi and I don't have any information about this guy I'm just reporting on the allegations here was allowed to compete he was previously charged with at least 20 counts for battery kidnapping pandering brackets pimping and robbery he pled guilty to the pimping charge acknowledging that the significant evidence against him he also allegedly slept near female contestants before being kicked off set for inappropriate behavior some of the female contest confirm being very uncomfortable around him he is also friends with Jake Paul and other influencers why was there not adequate background checks to catch people like this okay so saying there were dangerous people here and you let them sleep near the female contestants that's not cool they say that there were uh insufficient medical staff to attend to potential and actual injuries during the production there were several reports of injuries for example in in an online article Scott Robin of vital Vegas reported uh that in a concerning Twist of the story a source claims Desert Springs Hospital has seen countless patients today coming from Beast games due to a lack of food and water now we have a redaction here but I don't know if any of these specific plaintiffs were among the injured that could be what they're redacting here it could be like contestant 2 went to the hospital I don't know right that's so contractual control defendants required the contestants to sign an unenforceable adhesion contestant agreement blank the same unable agreement blank and it also unlawfully prohibits the contestants from blank we don't know what those are what is an adhesion contract most of the contracts you sign or you agree to in your daily life are adhesion contracts for instance let's say you want to get a cell phone and you want to get the cell phone on a plan right they're going to you're going to pay X much now but you're agre that you're going to have a subscription for the next 42 years or whatever it is um they're going to give you a big long list of terms that you have to agree to and your options are either take it or leave it right you can't renegotiate you can't go up to your cell phone provider and be like hey condition you know Clause 8 I really don't like that one can we reward it so adhesion contracts are subject to a little more scrutiny than contracts that might be negotiated between equals where you both have some input into the language in them so that's why that's sort of a relevant term here the contestants performed work that was in the usual course and scope of the defendants business so this is again towards employment right so the work that contestants perform for defendants do not work outside the scope of defendants core live entertainment content business as would be the case for instance for a service provider providing ancillary Production Services such as a food caterer the usual course and scope of defendants production business had nothing to do with cooking or serving food I either saying Mr Beast Productions does Video Entertainment content and so they have people who are employees who appear in their videos and so that suggests as well that if they need more people to appear in their videos that those people are also employees you see that sort of chain of logic there here on information and belief the usual course and scope of the Mr Beast as well as uh mrb 2024 business enterprises is the production of live non-scripted or semi-scripted entertainment content whose primary focus is on the contestants reaction to extreme stress as they compete in intense and exhausting challenges to win life-changing money so they're like this is what you do so yeah contestants are not customarily engaged in an independently established business of the same nature as the work performed for defendants again this is towards employment versus Contracting we'll skip over this part a little bit but I'll just explain like if you will have a catering company then you do catering all the time right that is what you do normally and if you have a lawn mowing company then you just do lawn mowing all the time but here they're saying these are not Caterers or lawnmowers or whatever else these aren't like these aren't people who are engaged in a business of providing a specific service to whoever needs it they were brought on for a specific task so that is kind of that distinction there so the argument defendants misclassified the contestants to avoid their employment obligations under California law and to wrongfully receive unearned tax credits from Nevada so this is to say this is that the reason why they're trying to misclassify them is because it's to their financial advantage really common issue um defendants required the contestants to sign an unconscionable agreement with illegal and unenforceable terms you know they're going to redact out the illegal and unenforcable terms even though I really want to know this I want to know this so bad um but what do we get um we get the contestant agreement also purports to require blank defendants unlawfully blank other unlawful blank now we're going to get into some of the really awful allegations defendants failed to provide a self safe and healthful place of employment to the particular and Collective detriment of the female contestants who suffered sexual harassment so they're required to provide a s safe and healthful place to work for the laws right safe and healthful is the term from the laws production defendants created working conditions that jeopardize the safety of workers including by not providing sufficient food or drink taking away their access to blank not having access or not having adequate medical staff on site and not providing reasonable Medical Care forcing them to not or not to sleep and forcing them to participate in games that unreasonably risk physical and mental injury they additionally created a toxic and hostile working environment for in particular the female contestants who suffered blank as well as sexual harassment throughout the production now I'm wondering what is the blank when sexual harassment is not is not redacted um so as more fully detailed below below which was not only noticed but allowed and even blank by the I'm sure that word has got to be encouraged by the production defendants blank and apparently this was allowed because of marching orders from the top so now they're getting into the leaked PDF that many of you may have seen purported how to succeed in Mr Beast production handbook states that it's okay for the boys to be childish and if the talent wants to draw a dick on the whiteboard in the video or do something stupid let them really do everything you can to empower the boys when filming and help them make content help them be idiots now idiots is one thing if it's drawing a dick on a whiteboard but it's another thing if it is harassing or otherwise unlawful or problematic content because that's an issue now a document that appears to be a Mr Beast employee handbook written in the first person from what appears to be Mr Donaldson's perspective titled How To Succeed Mr Beast production that was published on the internet uh by YouTube Creator Rosanna Pansino who alleges that she received it and confirmed its authenticity with two Mr Beast employees now they note that they haven't been able to independently confirm this but if the lawsuit is allowed to proceed and they get to go to Discovery then they can get this handbook and any other handbooks that would be out there and similarly if they're allowed to go to depositions if the lawsuit goes as far as depositions then they would be able to say Hey listen um we're just going to put Mr Beast Jimmy Donaldson and we're gonna ask him like is this an authentic document did you write this who wrote this okay so yeah they have that quote about it's okay for the boys to be childish now childish is a different thing because they note here helping the boys make content apparently translated to why is this redacted one hell of a redaction um I think they're going to be told like just refile this with all the redactions removed please because the court if this is filed redacted with the court the Court's going to be like I want to know what's going on um the apparent Mr Beast ethos of helping the boys be idiots seem to pave the way for production staff to allow blank and then blank and everything here is blanked out now we note here that they say laid the ground ground work for this Collective sexual harassment and sexual harassment against female employees so the blank is some form of sexual harassment we can infer probably maybe but we don't know um contestants forign five witnessed giant blanks um including a picture of blank by refusing to intervene blank defendants created permitted to exist and fostered a culture and pattern of and practice of sexual harassment including in the form of a hostile work environment where blank Beast games created hostile conditions where women were forced to endure the severe embarrassment and unfair disadvantage of blank blank um now I'm wondering if this connects back to the H like lack of access to hygiene products um but I don't know I'm just guessing right um at all relevant times defendants management up to including Senior Management and ownership had actual or constructive notice that the violence and sexual harassment detailed herein was occurring within the workplace okay allegations of violence defendants made multiple false statements to the contestants in connection with Beast games prior to the start of the competition defendants falsely advertised that the competition would have 1,000 contestants and then blank and this cut the odds of winning substantially I.E there were many many more contestants apparently so on March 18th Amazon shared the news that Mr Beast and Amazon announced the uh Beast games and they note the new show will premiere on Prime video and is set to become the biggest reality competition Series where 1,000 contestants will compete for a $5 million prize Mr Donaldson himself also announced uh the same day on his Twitter account that I'm going to be filming the largest game show in the history uh or in history and releasing it on Prime video over 1,000 contestants $5 million prize and many other world records emphasis added now the reason why this matters is because if you're doing a contest or a competition or the like then the odds matter right let's say somebody says I want to sell you this lottery ticket for $5 and you go okay what's the prize and they say $1 million well it's a very whether you're willing to spend $5 on that ticket if there's like two contestants like there's only two tickets being sold you want that ticket so bad in fact you want to buy both if you can but if there's actually like a billion tickets being sold is that worth $5 to you probably not at least not if you can do math so this is the issue now over 1,000 contestants that's kind of interesting right because it is over but what does over 1,000 contestants mean does it mean 1,5 does it mean 60,000 100,000 but yeah defendants widely promoted right through the first day of the Beast games competition that there'd be a thousand people competing however the contestants who had traveled distance having blocked off time that was required by defendants to compete in Beast games only first found out when the competition started that more than 1,000 we're having to read in here this did not sit well with the contestants who made their feelings known to the New York Times Reporter ker who reported that right from the start things seemed off some contestants said they had originally been told that the competition would have 1,000 participants this was also the figure advertised by Prime video early this year and then and noted um some felt that they had been misled about their odds of winning maybe you're confident enough you think you are the best out of a thousand people but maybe you don't think you're the best out of a million people I don't think they had a million people but I don't know how many people they had right um defendants misrepresented that reasonable meal needs would be met so the Beast games production uh represented in the Beast games rule packet that the blank would be provided by defendants I'm guessing that's food defendants failed to mention however that these food if they could be called that would be infrequently provided and insufficient in the number of calories in each meal were plaintiffs alleged by way of example blanked indeed according to local news reports multiple they quote as countless Beast game contestants were taken to the hospital including for dehydration Scott Robin of vital Vegas reported that the local Desert Springs Hospital had seen countless patients coming from Beast games due to lack of food and water and that the production had allegedly denied food to diabetics um if you're not familiar with sort of the basics of diabetes that could cause someone to die denied water to contestants and at least two individuals had seizures as a result now I got to say if I'm running an event and somebody has a seizure um that event is stopping right away I've helped run events you know of various sorts where things were going on you know big Productions and one of the things we did and we were very careful of was like there was water everywhere you couldn't you couldn't move without tripping over water not literally tripping but you know you get the idea that there's water all over the place and we would flag people down and be like you look like you're tired have a bottle of water please because we didn't want anybody dying you you don't want that so this is a big deal in addition to promising that contest or that the defendants would handle food they also promised blank and they say the reality was blank and lots more things but we do see defendants have not yet reimbursed them so we can read between the lines and say this is probably an issue over like the compensation or the reimbursement for travel Etc that we saw before the Beast games production was so void of standards of reasonable care that Mr Beast allegedly offered to cover the contestants therapy now most game shows and most Productions do a lot to try to make sure that nobody has to has to have therapy right you shouldn't have to have therapy after competing in a game show um so they say the defendants ended up volunteering to cover the cost of contestants therapy it was that bad the combination of all of the foregoing created an environment in which the contestants suffered severe emotional distress defendants apparently aware of the severe distress they caused the contestants by their lack of reasonable care and conducting the production allegedly offered to conduct or cover the contestants therapy Pansino has reported on alleged contestants informing her that defendants uh knew it was bad because they also offered to provide therapy sessions using their own insurance um Rosanna penino is getting a ton of shout out in this and um 14.5 million subscribers that says so she's not doing too badly um good for her plaintiff's individual experiences um redacted is basically how we can sum that for contestant one contestant 2 is redacted but also just not getting their money contestant three redacted contestant four a female redacted um and I'm guessing you know contestant four and contestant five a female where we see redacted I'm guessing those redactions are probably spicy time but we don't know um so class action General allegations basically this means we think that this applies to lots of you know lots of people and here are the sort of General issues um minimum wage unpaid overtime wages failure to provide accurate wage statements or any statements meal break penalties rest break penalties waiting time penalties statutory penalties liquidated damages declaratory and injunctive relief attorney fees and costs including prejudgment interest and anything else the court wants to give us and for the female uh for the female plaintiffs they also want things for workplace reforms uh prevention of sexual harassment and punitive damage attorney fees and costs Etc they say as Discovery progresses they may need to add things to this there may be more issues um numerosity what does this matter well if you want a class action you need lots of people right so proposed class consists of over blank thousand individuals making Joiner I.E running the cases as separate cases uh together impracticable and over 40 individuals ascertainability can we figure out who the members of this class are yes um Mr Beast games will have a list so that'll be super easy typicality are they are they you are they common in their claim right is it that everybody has the same claim and it's yes they all participate in the same game um superiority I is it a better idea to run this as a class action versus individual lawsuits and here they say yeah there's all of these different people or but they're all dealing with the same issues they're common issues of Law and fact the court is going to save a ton of time and money just hearing this as one case instead of hearing this as a billion cases they also note here if each individual member of the class were required by the court to file an individual lawsuit defendants would be able to use their vastly larger Financial Resources um billionaire right against the limited resources of these individual plaintiffs giving them a grossly unfair Advantage additionally those who do not have the resources to even bring individual actions would be unfairly compromised additionally the cost of the court system to individually hear each of these matters would be substantial so saying not only is it going to cost the court a whole pile of money to hear these individual cases but it'll be unfair to these plaintiffs it and you'll basically be giving the win to the defendants that's not cool you can't do that okay um existence and predominance of common law questions of fact and law I.E do they all share similar issues and they list them I'm not going to list them cu it'd be boring to have me reading a list but basically we've already covered it um did they get meal breaks did they get rest breaks did they get you know did they get sexually harassed did they these things so absent of class action most of the members of the proposed class and subass would find the cost of litigating their claims to be prohibitive leaving them without an effective remedy the class treatment of common questions of law in fact is also Superior to multiple individual actions or peac meal litigation particularly as to the defendant's legal responsibility for its violations of Labor code government code and business and professions code in that it conserves the resources of the courts and the litigants and promotes consistency and efficacy of adjudication now I think the court is going to be receptive to this because there's they've said listen there's more than a thousand there might be multiple thousands of people let's assume 10% of those people can bring a claim let hell let's assume 5% can bring a claim well that's still tons and tons and tons of individual lawsuits the court is not going to want to deal with this as individual lawsuits if it's 5% of these people bringing a claim so yep and adequacy does this are they properly going to be represented and they say yes we're good we're four law firms with who are good at this so yeah cause of action one failure to pay minimum wage we can summarize this pretty briefly they say these people were employees they are entitled to a minimum wage um they note none of the defendants are either religious charitable or nonprofit organization so therefore they are required to pay a minimum wage this wage was $16 per hour for all Industries and they say listen you required us to work 24-hour shifts for days with no wages 24 hours of wages at $16 an hour adds up real fast with thousands of people so the amount of money on this could end up being big big dollars um liquidated damages for failure to pay minimum wages so um they're allowed to recover wages they're allowed to recover all of that they say we want our monies failure to pay overtime wages so for All Hours worked in excessive eight hours in one work day and any work in excess of 40 hours in one work week and the first eight hours worked on the seventh day of work in any One Work Week um they get one and a half pay and twice the regular rate of pay for any work in excess of 12 hours in one day so you take that 16 hours and then that or $16 an hour that's for the first eight hours right and I'm just going to have to pull up my calculator here because I am going to have to do some math math so um and I am not good at math so I'm just going to pull this up so 8 * 16 so that's for the first eight hours in the day $128 okay and then the next um 4 hours it looks like is at Double so um I need to use brackets here 8 * 16 and then plus 4 * I should be able to do this in my head um you know what we're going to skip the calculator it's just going to be a lot of me embarrassing myself trying to do simple math lots of money here um basically they're saying there's going to be doubling of half of the day so huge money uh sexual harassment so this subsection imposes an ongoing Duty on defendants to refrain from harassing an employee on the basis of gender or sex from from creating a hostile work environment and to prevent discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender and sex now if you think about them being locked into a place where they can't leave and can't contact anyone else and can't even get distance or privacy or anything like that where they're being sexually harassed that's going to be a hostile work environment right um yeah that that is going to be a a really big deal and basically they're saying we want not only money but we also want punitive damages for this they're saying uh the they were they were subjected to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard of their rights such as to constitute malice oppression or fraud thereby entitling them to punitive damages in an amount appropriate to punish or make an example of defendants now I just want to say how much money does it take to make an example out of Mr Beast how much money does it take to say that Mr Beast is going to be hurting after this that's a lot of money fail to prevent harassment so they have a duty to prevent harassment discrimination and retaliation they say they breach that for reasons we don't know because they were reacted uh negligent infliction of emotional distress they say because you didn't provide Prov us with a safe and healthful place to work that people suffered emotional distress and I think if they can make out if they can establish their thing about therapy was offered then they're going to have a pretty good point on this and it notes this is further demonstrated by defendants allegedly offering to cover the contestants therapy sessions using their own insurance failure to provide uninterrupted meal breaks you're supposed to not only get food but get time to eat the food right so no employer shall employ any person for a work period of more than 5 hours without a meal period of not less than 30 minutes um you got to you got to have 30 minutes to put food into the food hole um pursuant to labor code an employer shall pay its employee an additional hour of pay at the regular rate of pay for each workday in which the meal period was not provided so they're saying they didn't provide a meal period so they got to pay an hour of time that adds up to thousands of people multiple days yeah failure to provide uninterrupted rest breaks so an employer may not require an employee to work during any rest period mandated by law employees are provided with 10-minute rest breaks per 4 hours of work or major portion thereof if they fail to comply with this law the employee is titled to 1 hour of pay for each day that the rest period was not provided so that 10 minutes ends up being worth an hour if you don't get it so they're saying we didn't get it we didn't get our additional pay where's the money fair to provide wages promptly upon termination when you're fired you got to get paid right away um employees are entitled to all compensation due immediately upon discharge and if you quit your entitled to get paid within 72 hours so if an employer fails to timely pay an employee upon discharge a resignation entitled to waiting time penalties constituting their regular rate of pay for up to 30 days multiply that by multiple thousands and that becomes a big big amount of money uh failure to provide an accurate and itemized wage statements so basically saying you got to provide a with a list and we were supposed to be told that and so therefore they're entitled to penalties plus attorney's fees and costs failure to indemnify for employee expenses and losses in discharging duties so you said you'd pay for those travel costs Etc you didn't so you got to pay unfair business practices so unfair business practice including all of the things above requiring them to enter into a legal contracts and providing false information to the state of Nevada to obtain unearned tax credits now if this lawsuit is successful Mr Beast might have some problems with the state of Nevada they might go hey so we paid you like $2 million that you weren't entitled to and we're big mad about that because um governments tend to be real mad if they pay you $2 million and you didn't have like you didn't you weren't entitled to the $2 million so if this is made out um you might see Nevada deciding to like charge Mr Beast that that could be fun I don't think uh I mean yeah in addition plaintiffs in the proposed class also alleged an unfair competition claim which prohibits any person in the operation of any contest or sweep stakes from misrepresenting in any manner the odds of winning any prize now this is venturing into really really bad areas because this is entering into gambling law and if you're violating gambling law you can be in some real um you can be in some real stink uh because they tend to have really strong rules on that so they say listen you said it was a th000 people for a $5 million prize but it was actually blank not 1,000 which reduced our odds so they say Public injunctive Relief is necessary here to prohibit conduct that is injurious to the general public Mr Beast has over 300 million followers online and will likely Garner more fans after the release of the Beast games production with Amazon millions of people could apply to participate in the next Beast games and they should be required to represent truthfully the conditions of the Beast Gaines and to adhere to the employment protections required by California law so they're saying we need to ban them from doing the bad things in future because they're going to do another one yeah false advertising so again they said it was a thousand people for 5 million that was false advertising declaratory relief so basically tell us we were right prayer for Relief what do they want they want first of all certify this as a class action put these plaintiffs as class representatives certify the class action appoint these law firms as class councel um order class notice to all class members defined above I.E let everyone who is a contestant know that they can join in order declaratory relief um as follows so basically declare that every that all of these things were violated uh enjoin the defendants from engaging in the practices alleged here in so ban them from doing it require them that if they're doing another Beast games to do it right award injunctive relief for uh workplace reforms and training programs for employees award all wages reimburse them for any unreimbursed business expenses award plaintiffs in the proposed class uh one hour of each additional pay Etc so all of the money do they title it total it up they do not um and award to the maximum extent Allowed by law and award attorney fees so that is the lawsuit it is one hell of a lawsuit and I can tell you that um Mr Beast is GNA fight this um like he's not going to just be like oh well let's uh let's roll over on this one and Amazon is going to fight this everyone involved is going to fight this because the amounts that are being claimed here here are huge this is going to be huge money if this goes through um I don't think it's going to bankrupt Mr Beast or Amazon or anybody like that um I don't think that's on the table but certainly if this is successful I would expect it to hurt and if this is successful I would expect that the next Beast games will just be not happening or at least happening in very different terms so yeah um that's the lawsuit we'll keep covering this as things go um maybe if people want I can try to make a shorter explainer video but I feel like long- winded and thorough is kind of my brand so we went through the whole thing we might do it again on a live if people really insist so but I I wanted to explain this one to you guys I thought this was fascinating I thought this was interesting um Mr Beast is running into some trouble we'll uh we'll see how it goes I'm really going to be watching to see if we get a an unredacted version of this because um the Mr Beast lawsuit behind the scenes is going to be lit anyway thank you guys for watching I hope you found this to be interesting or educational I want to thank my patreon supporters at the $50 level purple dragon air yellow CMP ccfr PJ's forever Canada's national fireman Sy ation bottles shock and Oz and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association and at the $20 level Mark Lindsey metcafe Larry kak Kyle Fox drunk all of the Bailey Cameron Johnson Andrew elich Marvin CZ and dorky danne thank you as well to my $10 supporters who will be in the craw immediately following thank you for watching hope this is armed you with knowledge see you next time oh and if you're watching this the day it came out um we're going over the P didd documents later on a live so come check that out too night [Music] he [Music]