Mass-Peculiarities: An Employers Guide to Wage & Hour Law in the Bay State 2022 Edition

© 2022 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2022 ed. | 179 provision violated due process principles. 1085 The First Circuit held that treble damages do not create the kind of due process concerns that are implicated by jury-awarded punitive damages, because the legislature had characterized those mandatory damages as “liquidated,” which are not punitive. The court reasoned that, in other contexts such as the FLSA, liquidated damages have been found to act as a stand-in for interest and other incidental damages. 1086 The transforming of previously punitive treble damages to mandatory liquidated damages, the court concluded, was the legislative method of avoiding a constitutionality concern. 1087 The First Circuit’s decision, however, addressed only federal due process principles, and did not address the viability of mandatory treble damages under the Massachusetts Constitution. 1088 Most recently, the Supreme Judicial Court held in Reuter v. City of Methuen , 1089 that a plaintiff is entitled to trebling of lost wages even where the employer paid owed wages late but before the filing of a court complaint. Prior to that decision, several trial courts had held in this circumstance that a prevailing plaintiff could only recover interest on the late payment and the interest could be trebled. 1090 Relying on language in the Wage Act that “[t]he defendant shall not set up as a defen[s]e a payment of wages after the bringing of the complaint,” these trial courts had reasoned that the late payment of wages by an employer prior to the bringing of a complaint was not subject to trebling. In Reuter , the plaintiff was terminated after she was convicted of larceny, and the defendant paid her unused vacation time three weeks after her termination. More than a year later, the plaintiff sued the defendant under the Wage Act for failing to pay out vacation time on the date of discharge. After a bench trial, the lower court concluded that the plaintiff was entitled to interest on the late payment and that the interest should be trebled, but that she was not entitled to treble damages on the vacation pay itself. On appeal, the Supreme Judicial Court reversed. It concluded that “late payments constitute clear violations of the statute” and the remedy of treble damages is “explicit.” 1091 It thus held that the plaintiff was entitled to trebling of the vacation pay itself rather than interest on the late payment. Acknowledging that its decision put employers in a difficult position when terminating an employee on short notice for misconduct, the Court nonetheless explained that “[b]y imposing strict liability . . . the Legislature has decided that employers rather than employees should bear the cost of such delay or mistakes, honest or not.” 1092 In order to avoid such mistakes, “employees who . . . have engaged in illegal 1085 Matamoros , 699 F.3d at 141. 1086 Id. One Massachuset t s t rial court has used this same reasoning to deny an award of prejudgment interest to a plaint iff in a wage case. See Feygina v. Hallmark Health Sys., Inc. , 31 Mass. L. Rpt r. 279 (Mass. Super. Ct . Aug. 5, 2013) (holding that plaint iff “would get an unfair windfall if she recovered both t reble damages as liquidated damages and prejudgment interest” because both types of damages serve the same purpose). 1087 Travers , at 549. 1088 Matamoros , 699 F.3d at 141. 1089 SJC-13121, 2022 WL 996270 (Apr. 4, 2022). 1090 See, e.g. , Dobin v. CIOview Corp. , 16 Mass. L. Rpt r. 785, 2003 WL 22454602 (Mass. Super. Ct . Oct . 29, 2003); Clermont , 102 F. Supp. 3d 353; Littlefield v. Adcole Corp. , 32 Mass. L. Rpt r. 706, 2015 Mass. Super. LEXIS 83 (Mass. Super. Ct . June 18, 2015). 1091 2022 WL 996270, *4. 1092 Id .