A decade of low pay, a promise about who'd inherit - and no paperwork to show for it
An Iowa worker who claimed years of unpaid labor lost his case - he couldn't prove the work he did or what he was owed.
On July 22, 2026, the Court of Appeals of Iowa sided with a family business, affirming a ruling that tossed a former worker's claim to years of back pay.
The worker - a shareholder and a son of the couple who ran Red Oak Diesel Clinic - said his parents had promised the business "would be passed along to the boys that were going to stay there and work for it." In return, he said, he worked for little or no wage from 2003 to 2017 and assumed the company would be "all [his]." The business denied any such deal and disputed whether he worked there at all after 2003. Nothing about the alleged succession plan was in writing.
After he was fired in 2017, he sued for unpaid wages, liquidated damages under Iowa's wage law, unjust enrichment, and quantum meruit - a claim for the fair value of work performed. A district court granted the company summary judgment, finding no promise or agreement that entitled him to anything. He appealed.
The appeals court agreed, for a reason that should land with anyone who keeps pay records. His claims fell apart on two questions: what work did he actually do, and what was he owed?
On the work, he described "rebuilding pumps, injection systems and nozzles" and said that by 2016 he was working "probably 20 hours, maybe, a week." Beyond his own word,...
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