On April 14, 2022, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that when an employee pursues and succeeds on a claim for the failure to pay overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the employee may not recover treble damages and other remedies under the Massachusetts Wage Act for the failure to pay those wages.
In Devaney v. Zucchini Gold, LLC, the Commonwealth’s highest court reversed the trial court and rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that they were entitled to recover treble damages under the Wage Act based on the defendant’s failure to pay them overtime wages in violation of the FLSA. Because the award of “such [s]tate law remedies would actually conflict with the [f]ederal remedies provided in the FLSA,” and because state courts must “construe … [s]tate laws to avoid preemption [by federal laws] if possible,” the SJC concluded that state law remedies under the Wage Act “are not available under these circumstances.”
As the SJC observed, the FLSA “‘provides an unusually elaborate enforcement scheme’” for failure to pay overtime and other wages, providing for criminal penalties for willful violations, authorizing workers to file private actions against their employers, and providing for the recovery (in addition to the amount of unpaid wages) of “liquidated damages in an additional equal amount, and costs and attorney’s fees.” Under the FLSA, however, “[a]n employer may escape liquidated damages by...
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