Manager owes $500K to black disabled man he enslaved for forced labor tweaktown.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tweaktown.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
He was happy with his employment at the restaurant, according to court documents, until Edwards took over the business from his brother in 2009.
At that point, Edwards moved Smith into a roach-infested apartment he owned, which Smith described in an
ABC 15 interview as little more than an office with a bed in it.
He refused to let Smith see his family, threatened to have him arrested and called him racial slurs, according to court documents.
South Carolina enslaved black worker, John Christopher Smith of Conway.
‘I couldn’t see anyone’
‘I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t see my family, so that was that,’ Smith said in the ABC interview in 2015.
Wed, 28 Apr 2021 17:54 UTC
Bobby Paul Edwards (L), John Christopher Smith (R) A former Conway restaurant manager serving a 10-year prison sentence for forcing a man with intellectual disabilities to work more than 100 hours a week without pay owes the former employee double the amount in restitution $546,000, a court ruled.
Bobby Paul Edwards was ordered to pay John Christopher Smith $273,000 in back pay as part of the sentencing in pleading guilty to a forced labor charge in 2019.
But the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month that Smith should get the extra money because of federal labor rules that entitle him to double the pay and overtime he was owed. The final decision about how much to pay Smith was sent back to the district court.
Black man who was made a modern-day slave by restaurant manager is owed $546k
Bobby Paul Edwards was previously ordered to pay John Christopher Smith, who started working for Edwards in 1990, $273,000 in backpay. By The Black Lives Matter slogan written on a sign at a protest. Getty Images
Story at a glance
A court has ruled that a former restaurant manager imprisoned for forcing an intellectually disabled Black man to work 100-hour weeks without pay must give the man more than $500,000.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Smith should get additional compensation for overtime amounting to $546,000.
Edwards pleaded guilty to not paying Smith wages for his work between 2009 and 2014 while he was the manager at the J&J Cafeteria in Conway, S.C.