I swear, HGTV produces some eminently watchable television, but boy do their show hosts really know how to get into some legal trouble. Example: Flip or Flop‘s Tarek and Christina El Moussa are being sued by a former employee for failure to pay compensation for his work. Oy vey.
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For the record, there is no indication or confirmation that that El Moussas colluded to deprive their former employee, Jonathan Schmier, of fair wages. So, those accusations won’t be made. According to TMZ, Schmier is suing the El Moussa’s for failure to compensate him for the work he completed on five homes in North Carolina.
Court documents indicate that Schmier was indeed hired by the El Moussa’s company, Next Level Property Investments, to secure properties (ostensibly like a talent scout, but for houses) that would be potentially good fits for the home-renovation and house-flipping processes the HGTV couple is best known for. Schmier was also led to believe, as court documents detail, that the El Moussa’s would be branching out onto the East Coast for their house-flipping endeavors (the bulk of the El Moussa’s work and livelihood is based in California).
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For his work, Schmier was reportedly promised $5,000 per house and is owed an additional $13,000 in back pay. He has allegedly not been paid a single red cent. For his work and for this failure to pay, HuffPost reports that Schmier is now seeking $37,800 for this entire workplace fiasco. Neither Christina nor Tarek El Moussa has released a statement through their reps on the matter. As reported by HuffPost, a rep for HGTV commented that they are aware of the lawsuit but wouldn’t comment further.
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This is definitely not a good look for the Flip or Flop brand or the people involved. The HGTV stars recently stepped out together at the 2017 Daytime Emmys looking comfortable in one another’s presence after months of rumors circulating about their divorce and lives as newly single TV stars. With this new bombshell, one can only imagine the El Moussas are none too pleased to be sucked back into the world of legal woes.
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