A Muslim woman is suing a Merrifield-based company, claiming that she was denied employment because of her faith.
Shahin Indorewala said she applied for a job at Fast Trak Inc. (2735 Hartland Road, Suite) last fall. The interview process was going well, she said in announcing the federal suit this week, but things allegedly went south when discussing prayer breaks with the company’s CEO.
The lawsuit alleges that the company denied her request to shorten her 90-minute lunch break to take two short five-minute breaks for prayers as an observant Muslim. The lawsuit also alleges that the company’s CEO mocked her religious headscarf in front of the company’s staff and refused to hire her.
“I was shocked and there were other people around me. There were other employees, there were other interviewees there, and I just felt very humiliated,” Indorewala said yesterday.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed the discrimination lawsuit Tuesday (Sept. 24) in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Indorewala and her attorneys are seeking a jury trial.
CAIR Attorney Gadeir Abbas told Tysons Reporter that Fast Trak will have about a month to respond to the lawsuit.
“It’s an extremely strong case,” Abbas said, adding that he has seen increasing levels of anti-Muslim sentiments in recent years. “The workplace reflects society.”
Fast Trak CEO Ramses Gavilondo told the Associated Press that he didn’t hire Indorewala because she “wanted to preach her religion” and that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated and found no wrongdoing. Fast Trak has so far not responded to Tysons Reporter’s requests for comment.
Photo via CAIR/Facebook
A Merrifield-based hospice care service will pay millions to settle allegations that it submitted incorrect claims to Medicare.
Capital Caring has agreed to pay $3.1 million to “settle allegations that it caused the government to overpay the organization as a result of billings it submitted to the Medicare Program for hospice services,” according to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Headquartered at 2900 Telestar Court, Capital Caring provides advanced home care and hospice services in the D.C. area.
More from the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia:
The overpayments were the result of claims Capital Caring submitted to Medicare for hospice services for patients who the government alleged either did not meet the hospice eligibility guidelines for the Medicare Program, Title XVIII of the Social Security Act, or for whom the hospice clinical record information maintained by Capital Caring was insufficient to support Medicare hospice coverage.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia worked with the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General on the civil matter.
Photo by Joe Gratz/Flickr
A Vienna family said they’ve been waiting months to get their money back from unwanted credit card charges by a local music school.
Family members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to Tysons Reporter, said that Jeffrey Levin, the president of District Music Academy, gave their son music lessons for about four months this spring.
When the family told Levin about billing on their credit card statements, they said he blamed the incorrect amount on an invoice issue involving the billing companies, before offering to write a check to cover the overcharged amount, which the family declined to provide.
The family claims that they never got a check.
The family waited for a few weeks before reaching out to their credit card company to prevent future charges from District Music Academy. As of last week, the family told Tysons Reporter that they are waiting to hear back from their credit card company before considering taking the matter to small claims court.
District Music Academy offers private in-home lessons, after school programs, entertainment for retirement communities in the D.C. area and other services, according to its website.
The Breakdown
Two Reston residents had a similar experience with unwanted charges from District Music Academy and took Levin’s company to small claims court earlier this year.
Michele Chesser told Tysons Reporter that she noticed the company was double-billing her credit card for her daughter’s piano lessons, charging her at the beginning and end of the month. In total, according to court documents, District Music Academy overcharged her $1,260.
Chesser said she contacted her credit card company, which was able to credit her two out of the five months of double billing. She decided to try to recover the rest of the money in court.
The judge heard the case in May and ordered Levin to pay the full amount. But as of today (Aug. 26), Chesser said she hasn’t gotten the money back.
“I don’t think I’ll ever see my money again,” she said.
Another Reston resident, Anjia Nicolaidis, told Tysons Reporter that her daughter started ukulele and voice lessons once a month in February 2018 and the family scheduled lessons through August.
For a family with two full-time working parents, she said that District Music Academy seemed like a convenient solution, adding there are “not a lot of companies offering that in-home instruction in the immediate area.”
But by July of that year, Nicolaidis noticed double charges and “random charges.” When she reached out to Levin, “first there was some delay in getting him to acknowledge that our records and the teacher’s record were consistent,” she said.
“We asked for that reimbursement and gave him a number of opportunities to give it to us,” Nicolaidis told Tysons Reporter, adding that Levin at first offered to make up the amount with credits to future lessons. After she declined the offer, the discussion over repayment broke down.
According to court records, Nicolaidis emailed Levin back on Sept. 10, writing:
As of this morning, September 10, 2018 you have not refunded the money you owe us. It has been a week since we received your email indicating you would process the refund. We have been corresponding about this issue for nearly two months…
We feel victimized and are in contact with other families that have had the same experience with District Music Academy.
Levin responded via email the same day, saying, “We have resolved all issues with our credit card system, but the process to refund the money is taking longer than expected. If it is acceptable to you, I can mail you a check today for the money due so that you can receive the fund more quickly.”
Nicolaidis said Levin never sent the check and she hasn’t heard from him since.
The company behind A Taste of Urbanspace in Tysons Galleria is facing a lawsuit for allegedly stealing a retail brokerage firm’s “intellectual capital.”
District Equities filed a lawsuit Monday alleging that Urbanspace Tysons LLC, “entered into an agreement with District Equities to help find retail vendors for the food hall, utilized the brokerage firm’s proprietary market knowledge and business relationships, and then terminated the agreement,” Bisnow reported.
District Equities was started by Great Falls resident Steve Gaudio in 2015.
The two companies worked together from the fall until Urbanspace terminated District Equities’ agreement, activating the noncompete clause that said District Equities cannot work on another food hall for two years, the article said.
District Equities “says the damages would be at least $75,000, a threshold that gives it jurisdiction in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia,” according to the Bisnow article.
Urbanspace Tysons LLC opened A Taste of Urbanspace in December, replacing celebrity chef Mike Isabella’s series of restaurants known as Isabella Eatery.
Recently, A Taste of Urbanspace has seen some changes.
Danielle’s Desserts closed for good at the mall earlier this month after its owner told Tysons Reporter that she wants to focus more on her health and family.
Meanwhile, Eater reported that Ice Cream Jubilee seems to have disappeared from the Tysons spot and is no longer listing it as one of its locations.
Lady M Cake Boutique is moving from its pop-up in A Taste of Urbanspace to a permanent spot on the second level of the mall.
Town of Vienna officials are denying the allegation that the Town Council discriminated against seniors and people with disabilities when rejecting an assisted living facility.
On July 17, Sunrise filed a lawsuit in Fairfax County Circuit Court against the Town Council after it denied Sunrise’s rezoning application for a proposed 82-unit facility downtown.
Sunrise is arguing that the Town Council’s rejection violated the Virginia Fair Housing Law and Sunrise was treated differently from other developers seeking rezoning under the Maple Avenue Commercial Zone.
In the lawsuit, Sunrise also claims that the rezoning application was consistent with the town’s Comprehensive Plan and that some council members’ concerns about parking “were not grounded in empirical evidence, and thus were necessarily arbitrary and capricious.”
Last Wednesday (Aug. 14), the Town Council responded to Sunrise’s allegations, saying “the Virginia Fair Housing Law is inapplicable given the facts asserted in the complaint.”
The Town Council wants Sunrise to file the complete legislative record, which includes the rezoning affidavit, staff reports and audio and minutes from Vienna meetings, hearings and work sessions.
“In order to evaluate Sunrise’s claims, the court necessarily must review and evaluate the legislative record which Council considered, said record being central to the claims brought by Sunrise,” according to the response.
While Sunrise is seeking a jury trial and wants the Town Council to reconsider the rezoning denial and pay Sunrise $30 million in damages, the Town Council asked the court to permanently dismiss the case.
Steven Briglia, the town’s attorney, told Tysons Reporter that the town does not comment on pending on litigation. Briglia said that no date has been set yet for the court to rule on the demurrer from the Town Council and motion.
Image via Town of Vienna
Sunrise Senior Living is suing Town of Vienna officials for $30 million after the Town Council rejected a rezoning application for an assisted living facility downtown.
The Vienna Town Council rejected the rezoning application for the proposed 82-unit facility in June after a long back-and-forth over a myriad of concerns involving parking, retail space and the location at the corner of Maple Avenue and Center Street.
While some councilmembers said that they felt Sunrise’s proposed parking for the facility would be sufficient for residents, guests, employees and shoppers, others said the facility would worsen the town’s parking woes.
On June 17, then-Councilmember Tara Bloch put forward a motion to approve the project, which failed with a 3-4 vote. Bloch, Linda Colbert and outgoing Councilmember Carey Sienicki voted in favor of the project. Mayor Laurie DiRocco, Pasha Majdi, Howard Springsteen and Douglas Noble voted no.
A month later on July 17, Sunrise filed a lawsuit in Fairfax County Circuit Court against Noble, DiRocco and Town Attorney Steve Briglia, according to a copy of the lawsuit, which was first reported by the Sun Gazette.
Sunrise is arguing that the Town Council’s rejection violated the Virginia Fair Housing Law by discriminating against seniors and people with disabilities.
“This case is about the Town Council’s intentional exclusion of the elderly and disable senior from residing in downtown Vienna based upon discriminatory, illegal, and irrational biases and assumptions,” the lawsuit says, adding that the town does not have any senior living facilities.
In the lawsuit, Sunrise claims that the rezoning application was consistent with the town’s Comprehensive Plan and that some council members’ concerns about parking “were not grounded in empirical evidence, and thus were necessarily arbitrary and capricious.”
“Simply put, the elderly and disabled were not types of people that the Council wanted to see front and center downtown,” the lawsuit says, “They did not fit into the downtown vision.”
The lawsuit also alleges that the Town Council treated Sunrise differently from other developers seeking rezoning under the Maple Avenue Commercial Zone.
Briglia, the town’s attorney, told Tysons Reporter that the town does not comment on pending on litigation, although he added that the town disputes the allegation that the council violated the Virginia Fair Housing Law. Briglia said that town filed its response to the lawsuit yesterday (Wednesday).
Sunrise is seeking a jury trial and wants the Town Council to reconsider its denial of the rezoning application and pay Sunrise $30 million in damages, plus legal fees.
Image via Town of Vienna
