Another v. Coughlin

481 Mass. 157

113 N.E.3d 329

Jillian CALIXTO¹ & another²

v.Heather COUGHLIN & others.³

SJC-12515

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex..

Argued November 8, 2018.

Decided December 28, 2018.

Nicholas J. Rosenberg, Boston, for the plaintiffs.

David G. Thomas (Mian R. Wang, Boston, also present) for the defendants.

The following submitted briefs for amici curiae: Christopher H. Lindstrom & Matthew P. Ritchie, Boston, for Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

Ben Robbins & Martin J. Newhouse, Boston, for New England Legal Foundation.

Arthur P. Murphy & Geoffrey P. Wermuth, Quincy, for Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane, LLP.

Present: Gants, C.J., Gaziano, Lowy, Budd, Cypher, & Kafker, JJ.

KAFKER, J.

The primary issue presented is the interplay, if any, between two employee protection statutes: G. L. c. 149, § 148 (Wage Act), and the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 2101 - 2109 (2018) (WARN Act). The defendant corporate officers (officers)⁴ directed ISIS Parenting, Inc. (company), where the plaintiff employees (employees) worked until it abruptly ceased operations and terminated its entire workforce. Alleging a WARN Act violation for failure to provide them with sixty days' advance notice of the company's shutdown, the employees brought a class action lawsuit against the company in Federal court and received a nearly $2 million default judgment. Subsequently, the employees brought a putative class action lawsuit against the officers in State court under the Wage Act, claiming that the $2 million WARN Act damages constitute wrongfully withheld "earned wages" for which the officers are individually liable. In addition, the employees argue that the officers committed a breach of fiduciary duties that they owed to the company by allowing the company to violate the WARN Act. Because we conclude that WARN Act damages are not "earned wages" under the Wage Act, and that the employees have not asserted a viable claim for breach of fiduciary duties, we affirm the dismissal of the employees' case.⁵

1. Background. We review the allowance of a motion to dismiss de novo, accepting all well-pleaded facts in the complaint as true, and taking into account any attached materials. See Cook v. Patient Edu, LLC, 465 Mass. 548, 549, 989 N.E.2d 847 (2013). The employees were among the more than 200 people who worked at the company, which operated for more than a decade and had several stores in the Boston area.⁶ At some point the company ran into financial difficulties, and its management decided to stop operating. On January 14, 2014, without any prior warning, one of the officers informed the company's employees that the company was shutting down and their employment was terminated immediately.

That fall, the employees brought a class action lawsuit against the company in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleging a violation of the WARN Act. The WARN Act provides that an employer, defined as a "business enterprise" that employs at least one hundred full-time employees or at least one hundred full- and part-time employees who collectively work at least 4,000 non-overtime hours per week, 29 U.S.C. § 2101(a)(1), "shall not order a plant closing or mass layoff until the end of a [sixty]-day period after the employer serves written notice of such an order" on each affected employee or the employees' representative, 29 U.S.C. § 2102(a). If an employer fails to comply with the sixty-day notice requirement, it "shall be liable to each aggrieved employee who suffers an employment loss as a result of such closing or layoff" for "back pay" and employee benefits covering each day of the notice violation. 29 U.S.C. § 2104(a)(1).⁷ "Back pay" under the WARN Act is owed for each day of violation and is set as the higher of the "average regular rate" received during the employee's last three years of employment or the "final regular rate" received by the employee. 29 U.S.C. § 2104(a)(1)(A). The WARN Act further provides that these remedies "shall be the exclusive remedies for any violation of this chapter." 29 U.S.C. § 2104(b). The WARN Act also states that "[t]he rights and remedies provided to employees by this chapter are in addition to, and not in lieu of, any other contractual or statutory rights and remedies of the employees, and are not intended to alter or affect such rights and remedies." 29 U.S.C. § 2105.

The company did not defend the lawsuit, and the Federal District Court judge eventually awarded a nearly $2 million default judgment under the WARN Act to the employees. After failing to collect any of this judgment amount from the company due to the company's insolvency, the employees brought this putative class action in the Superior Court against the officers directly. The officers moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim.⁸ The Superior Court judge granted the motion, finding that the Federal District Court's WARN Act award "does not qualify as ‘earned wages’ giving rise to a claim under the Wage Act." This appeal followed.

2. Discussion. a. Whether WARN Act damages are earned wages under the Wage Act. The Wage Act provides that "[e]very person having employees in his service shall pay weekly or bi-weekly each such employee the wages earned by him to within six days of the termination of the pay period during which the wages were earned if employed for five or six days in a calendar week." G. L. c. 149, § 148, first par. It also provides that outstanding wages shall be paid "in full on the day of [an employee's] discharge." Id. To combat "unscrupulous employers" who violate these requirements by withholding earned wages (citation omitted), Segal v. Genitrix, LLC, 478 Mass. 551, 560, 87 N.E.3d 560 (2017), the Wage Act, with limited exceptions not relevant here, provides a private cause of action, imposes personal liability on certain corporate officers, and awards mandatory treble damages and attorney's fees to a successful plaintiff. See Melia v. Zenhire, Inc., 462 Mass. 164, 170, 967 N.E.2d 580 (2012) (describing these provisions of Wage Act). It may also impose criminal liability. See G. L. c. 149, § 27C.

Although the statute does not specifically define "wages earned," we have adopted the "plain and ordinary meaning" of those terms. Awuah v. Coverall N. Am., Inc., 460 Mass. 484, 492, 952 N.E.2d 890 (2011). Specifically, we explained there that "[w]here an employee has completed the labor, service, or performance required of him, therefore, according to common parlance and understanding he has ‘earned’ his wage." Id. In Massachusetts State Police Commissioned Officers Ass'n v. Commonwealth, 462 Mass. 219, 220, 226, 967 N.E.2d 626 (2012) ( State Police ), we provided further guidance in the context of employees challenging a mandatory furlough program that they contended should not have been applied to them. We rejected their argument that the deprivation of wages they would or should have earned was the deprivation of "earned wages" under the Wage Act. Id. at 226, 967 N.E.2d 626. We agreed with the employer that "the right to payment of ‘earned’ wages is secured by virtue of work or service actually performed," id. at 225, 967 N.E.2d 626, and thus that "a prospective reduction in the number of days to be worked," even if improper, "does not deprive the plaintiffs of any wages ‘earned’ " under the Wage Act, id. at 226, 967 N.E.2d 626.

The same is true for the failure to pay the additional compensation awarded to workers under the WARN Act if the sixty days' notice of plant closure is not provided. The payment is not for work that has actually been performed but for work that would have been performed had the sixty days' notice been provided. In fact, the WARN Act provides that the amount of compensation "shall be reduced by ... any wages paid by the employer to the employee for the period of violation" (emphasis added). 29 U.S.C. § 2104(a)(2)(A). The extraordinary relief the Wage Act provides -- individual liability, treble damages, and possible criminal liability -- is directed at particularly egregious behavior, i.e., not paying wages for work actually performed, and not at other employment violations. See Segal, 478 Mass. at 560, 87 N.E.3d 560 (purpose of Wage Act is to prevent employers' unscrupulous, long-term detention of wages).

Furthermore, not only must the employees' work actually have been performed, but the wages also must be presently -- not just prospectively or potentially -- due to be paid by the employer. See, e.g., State Police, 462 Mass. at 225, 967 N.E.2d 626 ; Weems v. Citigroup Inc., 453 Mass. 147, 153-155, 900 N.E.2d 89 (2009). For example, we recently held that accrued, unused "sick time" was not an "earned wage" under the Wage Act where separating employees were only entitled to compensation for that accrued sick time under certain conditions. See Mui v. Massachusetts Port Auth., 478 Mass. 710, 713, 89 N.E.3d 460 (2018). We also rejected the argument that tax deferred compensation was wages under the Wage Act that must be paid within seven days of the end of the pay period, holding that "[t]he Legislature's remedy for the evil of unreasonable detention of wages is not applicable to deferred compensation contributions," as "[t]he contributed funds are intended to be held, out of the employee's possession, for an extended period." Boston Police Patrolmen's Ass'n, Inc. v. Boston, 435 Mass. 718, 720, 761 N.E.2d 479 (2002). The work must have been actually performed and wage payments must be presently due to trigger the precise requirements and severe penalties of the Wage Act.

Characterizing WARN Act damages as back pay does not alter this analysis. Earned wages are not the equivalent of back pay.

Back pay compensates a variety of different types of employment law violations under State and Federal law. In general, it compensates employees for amounts that they "normally would have earned" had a violation not occurred (...