On April 14, 2022, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court docket (SJC) dominated that when an worker pursues and succeeds on a declare for the failure to pay additional time wages beneath the Honest Labor Requirements Act (FLSA), the worker could not recuperate treble damages and different treatments beneath the Massachusetts Wage Act for the failure to pay these wages.

In Devaney v. Zucchini Gold, LLC, the Commonwealth’s highest courtroom reversed the trial courtroom and rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that they have been entitled to recuperate treble damages beneath the Wage Act based mostly on the defendant’s failure to pay them additional time wages in violation of the FLSA. As a result of the award of “such [s]tate regulation treatments would truly battle with the [f]ederal treatments supplied within the FLSA,” and since state courts should “construe … [s]tate legal guidelines to keep away from preemption [by federal laws] if attainable,” the SJC concluded that state regulation treatments beneath the Wage Act “are usually not out there beneath these circumstances.”

The FLSA and the Massachusetts Wage Act

Because the SJC noticed, the FLSA “‘offers an unusually elaborate enforcement scheme’” for failure to pay additional time and different wages, offering for legal penalties for willful violations, authorizing staff to file personal actions in opposition to their employers, and offering for the restoration (along with the quantity of unpaid wages) of “liquidated damages in an extra equal quantity, and prices and lawyer’s charges.” Below the FLSA, nevertheless, “[a]n employer could escape liquidated damages by exhibiting to the courtroom’s satisfaction that it acted in good religion and had an affordable floor for believing that it didn’t violate the FLSA.”

The Wage Act requires the “well timed fee of ‘wages earned,’” together with additional time wages, and “offers its personal enforcement scheme.” Employers that violate the Wage Act are topic to civil and legal sanctions, and actions to implement its necessities could also be introduced by the Commonwealth’s lawyer normal or by the workers themselves. As well as, because the SJC noticed, the treatments out there to staff beneath the Wage Act “are, in some situations, extra beneficiant than these out there beneath the FLSA.” For instance, workers who achieve proving claims beneath the Wage Act are entitled to “a compulsory award of treble damages, as liquidated damages, for any misplaced wages and different advantages,” and employers could not escape treble damages by exhibiting that they acted in good religion or had cheap grounds for his or her actions.

Background Details and the Trial Court docket’s Ruling

The plaintiffs in Devaney—Rutchada Devaney, Thewakul Rueangjan, and Thanyathon Wungnak—have been workers of the Rice Barn, a Massachusetts restaurant owned by defendant Zucchini Gold, LLC. Though Zucchini Gold had “did not maintain full, contemporaneous information of the plaintiffs’ hours of labor or of wages paid,” as required by federal regulation and Massachusetts regulation, the plaintiffs offered testimony and their very own information exhibiting that every had labored between fifty and seventy-three hours per week and had not been paid on the additional time charge for hours labored over forty every week.

The plaintiffs filed swimsuit in opposition to Zucchini Gold, asserting claims for failure to pay additional time in violation of the FLSA and claims that their employer had violated the Wage Act by failing to pay the FLSA-mandated additional time wages in a well timed method. Crucially, the plaintiffs didn’t embody a declare that Zucchini Gold had violated the Massachusetts additional time statute, as a result of they may not: though the Massachusetts statute is modeled on its federal counterpart, it consists of an exemption from additional time obligations for restaurant staff (such because the plaintiffs) that Congress eradicated from the FLSA in 1977. (The Massachusetts Legislature is contemplating two payments that will eradicate that exemption.)

After awarding abstract judgment to the plaintiffs as to the defendants’ legal responsibility for failing to pay additional time wages in violation of the FLSA and the Wage Act, the trial courtroom held a jury trial solely on the problem of the plaintiffs’ damages. Following a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs, the trial courtroom awarded every plaintiff treble damages plus attorneys’ charges and prices pursuant to the Wage Act. The defendants well timed appealed, and the SJC by itself initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court docket.

The SJC’s Evaluation

The SJC held that the trial courtroom’s award of treble damages beneath the Wage Act for failure to pay FLSA-mandated additional time wages had been misguided. After reviewing and evaluating the federal and state statutes’ respective enforcement schemes, the courtroom concluded that allowing an worker “aggrieved by a violation of the [f]ederal additional time regulation” to recuperate Massachusetts Wage Act treatments “for premature funds of wages due solely beneath the FLSA” would hinder “‘the accomplishment and execution of the total functions and goals’ of the FLSA” and thus implicate federal preemption issues.

Because the courtroom defined, as a result of Zucchini Gold’s obligation to pay additional time arose solely beneath the FLSA, the plaintiffs’ Wage Act declare for premature additional time funds was solely depending on the FLSA violations—and “[i]n these circumstances, permitting the plaintiffs to pursue [W]age [A]ct treatments [i.e., automatic treble damages] for FLSA violations would quantity to circumvention of the treatment prescribed by Congress,” which, as famous above, offers for “at most, double damages,” and (not like the Wage Act) permits employers to keep away from double damages “if they’ll set up … that they acted in good religion and upon an affordable foundation.” Accordingly, the SJC reversed the trial courtroom’s damages award and remanded the case to the decrease courtroom for “a dedication of the suitable damages beneath the [f]ederal additional time regulation.”

Along with contesting the trial courtroom’s award of treble damages beneath the Wage Act, Zucchini Gold argued that the jury’s verdict relating to the quantity of the plaintiffs’ damages was unsupported by ample proof as a result of it was based mostly solely on the plaintiffs’ testimony and information of the hours that that they had labored and the wages that Zucchini Gold had paid them. The SJC rejected that argument, reasoning that an employer that has did not adjust to its authorized obligation to take care of correct information of wages and hours “‘can’t be heard to complain that the damages lack the exactness and precision of measurement that will be attainable had [it] saved information’ in accordance with the [law].” Accordingly, the courtroom held, the plaintiffs’ personal testimony supplied cheap and ample grounds for the jury’s calculation and award of damages.

Key Takeaways

The SJC’s choice in Devaney considerably reduces the publicity dangers for employers with staff in Massachusetts who’re entitled to additional time wages beneath federal regulation, however not beneath Massachusetts regulation. Below prior regulation, because the trial courtroom choice beneath evaluation in Devaney confirmed, such employers may, if discovered to have violated federal additional time necessities, be held responsible for computerized treble damages beneath the Massachusetts Wage Act. After Devaney, workers in such circumstances will probably be restricted to double damages, and employers may have a chance (not out there beneath the Wage Act) to keep away from doubling by exhibiting that they acted in good religion and upon an affordable foundation.

The choice additionally underscores the significance of preserving full and correct information of worker hours and wages. Failure to take care of such information could not solely violate federal and state legal guidelines, it might additionally go away an employer with no prepared technique of countering its workers’ testimony and different proof relating to the hours they labored, and—because the Devaney courtroom held—with no legitimate objection to any lack of precision or inexactness within the workers’ proof.