LOS ANGELES — Adult talent agent Derek Hay said he may appeal a decision issued yesterday against his company, LA Direct Models, in a complaint that reached the California Labor Commissioner’s standards enforcement division.
A Labor Commissioner attorney awarded adult performer Nadya Nabakova (now known as Bunny Colby) $3,500 for unpaid earnings and interest.
Nabakova was further awarded $11,450 in attorney’s fees in the case.
The state’s attorney found that LA Direct Models wrongfully withheld $2775 for alleged rent due, $200 for photos, agency had arranged with a photographer and $250 for commissions held unlawfully.
Her attorney, Courtney Puritsky, told XBIZ that “we are very pleased with this outcome.”
Hay, meanwhile, told XBIZ he was “very disappointed” of the decision from the Labor Commissioner's office.
“The case is twofold in nature, with one being financial and the other being centered on allegations of more than one set being an unsafe work environment,” Hay said.
“On the financial element, it is likely similar in mainstream TV and feature film and perhaps even sports, whilst very common in the adult film industry, that agents forward, advance and arrange, significant value in goods and services in the furtherance of enabling an actor to begin work, such as flight, test, professional images and accommodation.”
Hay explained that if advanced expenses can’t be recouped later from the earnings of the performer, “it has a chilling effect on the agency's ability or inclination to do similarly for aspiring new actors again, as one imagines it would for other agencies who work in similar fashion.”
As for allegations made that the Nabakova worked on assignments that had an unsafe work environment, Hay said that her statements “lacked any supporting evidence, including any statement from any witness of any of these occurrences, including any other actor or production staff member on the same sets.”
“In the current era, it has become commonplace that mere allegation is sufficient to assume wrongdoing on the part of the accused,” Hay said.
Hay said that LA Direct Models has a right to appeal the case to a state Superior Court in a trial de novo (new), “where the evidentiary thresholds are much higher and the case has to be more significantly proven, than in the administrative hearing just concluded.”
“We are considering our options with regard to appeal,” Hay said.