The security firm ignored 20 settlement offers and ended up paying eleven times the deal
Two security officers settled their wage claim against GardaWorld for $50,000. The legal fees alone came to eleven times that.
A federal court in Washington, D.C. on October 19 ordered the security firm to pay $542,674 in attorney fees and $9,988.36 in costs after what it described as years of contentious litigation over unpaid wages. Combined with the settlement, GardaWorld’s total bill landed at $552,662.36.
The workers sued in December 2023, alleging GardaWorld put them in security officer roles without paying the mandatory security officer minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the D.C. Minimum Wage Act. They also brought claims under the D.C. Wage Payment and Collection Law, plus unjust enrichment and breach of contract.
Getting there was messy. A magistrate judge found “gamesmanship” by defence counsel during discovery. The court itself identified “real problems” with how the defendant had conducted the case.
After failed mediation and a contested summary judgment motion, the court largely sided with the workers - holding that a reasonable jury could conclude they qualified as security officers entitled to the higher minimum wage. GardaWorld did prevail on narrower points: one worker could not claim wages for the period before she obtained her security officer certification in November 2024, and a co-defendant property manager, JLL, saw its exposure cut to just eleven shifts at a single building before being dismissed.
Then came the fee fight. D.C. law mandates attorney fees for prevailing employees in wage cases. The workers’ counsel sought $638,440 in fees. GardaWorld asked for a 70% cut - a figure the court said was “seemingly plucked out of thin air.” The court applied a 15% reduction instead, reflecting the workers’ partial success at summary judgment.
The court’s closing remarks were blunt. The workers had extended “no fewer than twenty settlement overtures” over the course of the litigation, “the majority of which GardaWorld ignored.” Their opening offer in August 2024 was $55,000 for wages and damages. GardaWorld declined. The case settled for $50,000 - $5,000 less.
The court said it “remains puzzled” why GardaWorld chose years of litigation only to settle for essentially the opening bid, and held that GardaWorld “cannot litigate tenaciously and then be heard to complain about the time necessarily spent by the plaintiff in response.”
For HR teams weighing whether to fight or settle a wage-and-hour claim, the maths is hard to ignore: statutory fee-shifting turned a $50,000 dispute into a half-million-dollar liability.
The decision is a memorandum opinion issued October 19, 2026. A separate order will issue.
