Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

© Getty

THE company controlled by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen is being sued by a group of former interns, although the sisters themselves are not implicated in the alleged mistreatment.The class-action suit, which alleges wage theft, claims that the company, Dualstar, failed to pay about 40 past and present interns who have worked for them, but the lead plaintiff had only positive words for the sisters.

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"They're really nice people.They were never mean to anyone.They're business people," Shahista Lalani said of the actresses turned entrepreneurs, but asserted that the head technical designer for the The Row, under whom she worked, had not treated her as kindly:"She was very demanding," she told Page Six."I was doing the work of three interns.I was talking to her all day, all night; emails at night time for the next day, like 10 pm at night."

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The complaint alleges that Lalani, who worked for the company in 2012, worked 50-hour weeks "inputting data into spreadsheets, making tech sheets, running personal errands for paid employees, organising materials, photocopying, sewing, pattern cutting, among other related duties" - and that many other interns who also "should have been paid the minimum wage plus overtime because they were doing the same type of jobs as the paid colleagues without receiving academic or vocational credit".Lalani also claims that she was hospitalised for dehydration due to the demands of the job.

The Row did not respond this morning when contacted for a statement, but a representative told the New York Post of the action, "Dualstar is not aware of this".

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