It has been a busy Spring for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). On April 14, 2022, on the heels of Reuter v. City of Methuen (see our April 7th client alert detailing that decision), the SJC issued another significant wage and hour decision in Devaney v. Zucchini Gold, LLC. In Devaney, the SJC ruled that the Massachusetts Wage Act’s (“Wage Act”) remedies were preempted by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) where employees’ claims for unpaid overtime wages arose exclusively under federal law. This determination resulted in the restaurant employees being prevented from recovering the more expansive remedies available under the state Wage Act, most notably the entitlement to mandatory treble damages. The Devaney decision is noteworthy because it diverges significantly from how lower state courts had previously handled these types of claims.
Although similar, the Wage Act and the FLSA deviate in some important ways. For instance, under the Wage Act, certain categories of employees, including restaurant workers, are not entitled to overtime wages. Under federal law, there is no longer an exemption for restaurant workers so they are entitled to overtime under that law. In Devaney, multiple restaurant workers asserted unpaid overtime claims under the FLSA but could not do so under state law. Nevertheless, the employees argued that violations of the FLSA entitled them to damages under the...
ANKARA — US President Donald Trump made a series of “false” and “uncorroborated” claims about the Iran conflict and his foreign policy record during a recent press conference, according to a fact ...