Lady Gaga's Ex-Assistant Claims the Singer's a Money Monster!

Pop superstar's company sued by former employee who says she was denied overtime pay

By Natalie Finn Dec 27, 2011 10:43 PMTags
Lady GagaJun Sato/WireImage

Has Lady Gaga been keeping too tight of a hold on her meat-purse strings?

The pop superstar's former assistant claims she's owed nearly $400,000 in overtime pay after attending to Gaga's every need for four weeks in 2009 and then throughout 2010 and into March of this year.

So, just how much overtime does it take to keep the singer happy, according to Jennifer L. O'Neill's lawsuit?

The plaintiff claims she worked 7,168 hours of overtime during her period of employment, meaning she was basically on duty almost every hour of every day that she worked for the Born This Way artist. Her complaint states that she was paid $1,000 per week for her time in 2009 and then an annual salary of $75,000 for the rest.

View the lawsuit

But that's just base salary, according to the suit, and does not account for the time O'Neill spent attending to Gaga business "not only in her home, but also during her travels to her global concert tours, from city to city throughout the world, at locales including stadiums, private jets, fine hotel suites, yachts, ferries, trains and tour buses."

O'Neill "was always behind the scenes, and figuratively, if not literally, always at her side," the suit states.

"Jennifer O'Neill's lawsuit is completely without merit," a rep for Gaga tells E! News of the suit, filed Dec. 14 in U.S. District Court in New York.

The plaintiff is demanding she be paid at least $393,014, encompassing the allegedly unpaid overtime and fair compensation for working 10-hour days.