The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) – Massachusetts’ highest court – recently held that under the Massachusetts Wage Act (“Wage Act”) employees are entitled to automatic treble wage damages – that is, three times the amount of the unpaid wages –for any late wage payments, even if the employer fixed the payment error before the employee commenced a proceeding. This ruling marks a deviation from prior Wage Act interpretations, which consistently limited damages to treble interest on the delayed wage payment made before the filing of a complaint, rather than treble damages on the full unpaid wage, and makes it more important than ever that employers make timely and complete payment of wages.
In Reuter v. City of Methuen, the employer did not pay out the plaintiff’s accrued vacation time of nearly $9,000 until three weeks after her termination. After it received a demand letter, the city paid $185.42 in trebled interest on the delayed payment plus attorneys’ fees consistent with prior case law. After the plaintiff sued, a trial judge entered an order finding that the plaintiff was properly entitled to trebled damages on the delayed payment, in addition to attorney’s fees.
The case eventually made its way to the SJC who rejected the trial judge’s holding that treble interest is the sole remedy for the employee’s untimely final wage payment (along with attorneys’ fees), as “it is unsupported by the language of the statute and inconsistent with its purpose.”...
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