When Michael R. Bloomberg ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, he and his aides promised a legion of staff members that they would be paid through the general election, whether he made it to November or not.
But when Mr. Bloomberg dropped out in March 2020, having won only the faraway contest in American Samoa, those campaign employees did not receive the money and health benefits they had been promised to continue the fight against Donald J. Trump, who was in the last year of his first term as president.
More than five years later — and as the statute of limitations to pursue claims approaches — Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and a billionaire, lost on Thursday a Massachusetts lawsuit brought by a former campaign field organizer. The outcome could lead other former campaign employees to seek pay that had been promised to them.
