The men won over $850,000 in wages and damages, said their lawyer, Patrick J. Whalen.
TRENTON -- Four men from the Trenton area were awarded back pay and damages Friday following a whistleblower lawsuit trial in Mercer County Superior Court, their lawyer announced.
In all, Arkadiusz Lukaszewski, Dariusz Gocal, Tadeusz Ogrodnik and Ryszard Klysinski won over $850,000 in combined back wages and damages, said their lawyer, Patrick J. Whalen.
The plaintiffs at their lawyer's office in Trenton Friday April 15, 2016. (Contributed photo) The suit dates to 2010 and had to go through the appellate division at one point, Whalen said.
On Friday, a jury sided with the men in their Conscientious Employee Protection Act claim, also known as CEPA, New Jersey's whistleblower act.
The men went to work for Medford masonry company Jasticon in 2010 and worked on various construction projects, particularly in Cape May and Medford, the suit said.
And some of them were for public entities and funded by the state and through the Federal Stimulus Act, which subjected them to the state's Prevailing Wage Act.
They included a senior housing in Medford and the Conifer Village at Cape May, the lawsuit says.
Not long after working at Jasticon, Whalen said, the men experienced problems with their paychecks, from lower pay than expected to questionable cash payments and false promises from company supervisors.
In the suit, the men allege Lukaszewski, Gocal and Ogrodnik were initially paid $34.35 per hour, but it should have been $61.57 under the state wage law.
And Klysinski was paid $24.00 per hour but it should have been much higher.
The men also found serious safety issues on the job sites, Whalen said, and were retaliated for raising the issues.
During their time with the company, Whalen said, the men were treated differently due to their Polish heritage as well, he said. "They really treated them as subhumans," Whalen charged Friday.
The men were eventually dismissed from Jasticon.
The heart of the case, Whalen said, were the safety issues and the work conditions the men questioned, and were then punished for.
The men worked on faulty scaffolding high in the air, upwards of 35 feet, and basically had to scale the exterior at times, Whalen said. "It was all kinds of routine safety stuff," he said.
The men felt wholly vindicated by the verdict, Whalen said. He portrayed his clients as good, hard-working men who took on an influential company and won.
Jasticon's lawyer said an appeal is in the works and the jury got it wrong. The company has been a leader in the masonry industry in the Delaware Valley for 40 years, attorney John Shields said.
The company will be pursuing "every available avenue" to make sure the jury's decision is undone, Shields said.
"It's a bad verdict and there was no evidence to support it that we thought was credible," Shields said.
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.