Spears v. Miller

2006 Mass. App. Div. 151
CourtMassachusetts District Court, Appellate Division
DecidedSeptember 26, 2006
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 2006 Mass. App. Div. 151 (Spears v. Miller) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts District Court, Appellate Division primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Spears v. Miller, 2006 Mass. App. Div. 151 (Mass. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinion

Williams, PJ.

After leaving their jobs as administrative medical assistants, plaintiffs Ellen Spears (“Spears”) and Leslie Gabriel (“Gabriel”) brought suit against their former employers, Ronald Miller, M.D. and Crown Medical Group, P.C. (together, “Miller”) in 2006 to recover unpaid overtime wages. Miller moved to dismiss the complaint as time-barred. The motion judge allowed Miller’s motion on the basis that the statute of limitations, G.L.c. 151, §20A, applicable to the plaintiffs’ employment-wage claim limited the time in which to bring suit to two years. Given the low threshold a plaintiff must meet to survive a Mass. R. Civ. R, Rule 12(b) (6) motion, we reverse as to Spears’ and Gabriel’s breach of contract claim, but affirm as to their claims for unjust enrichment and for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

Spears was employed by Miller from May, 1997 until April, 2005; Gabriel was so employed from May, 1999 until March, 2004. Their complaint, filed on January 18, 2006, set forth three theories of recovery: breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and unjust enrichment. These common law claims have six-year limitations periods. G.L.c. 260, §2. The basis of [152]*152the complaint was Miller’s alleged failure to pay the plaintiffs overtime wages from the beginning of employment through 2002. As Spears and Gabriel concede, their complaint was filed more than three years after Miller’s last alleged breach. They argue, however, that because their claims are not G.L.c. 151 employment claims, which have a two-year statute of limitations, but rather common law claims with a six-year limitations period, their complaint was timely filed.4

Chapter 151, the Massachusetts statute “comparable” to the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §255, see Mogilevsky v. Bally Total Fitness Corp., 311 F. Supp. 2d 212, 215 (D. Mass. 2004), constituted the minimum fair wage law. G.L.c. 151, §22. Specifically, G.L.c. 151, §§1A and IB mandate that, with certain exceptions irrelevant here, employees who work more than 40 hours in a given work week must be paid at least time-and-a-half for those overtime hours. See, generally, Goodrow v. Lane Bryant, Inc., 432 Mass. 165, 174-175 (2000). Section IB sets out various penalties for an employer’s violation of §1A, including treble damages and attorney’s fees.5 Although Spears’ and Gabriel’s complaint alluded to “legally mandated overtime pay” and to Miller’s failure to pay overtime as “a violation of state law and [the] federal Fair Labor Standards Act,” they argue it is “the fact of nonpayment of overtime wages” and “not the illegality of the conduct” that underlies their theories of recovery.

The language of G.Lc. 151, §20A, the “limitations period” section of the chapter, differs from language customarily encountered in statutes of limitation. Section 20A states that “[t]he provisions of this chapter shall not be applicable to any cause of action accruing more than two years prior to the date of filing in court of a ... civil action.” That language is not, for instance, the unequivocal verbiage of the “comparable” federal statute, see Mogilevsky, supra, at 215, which bluntly “forever bar [s]” actions brought after two years.6 By its own terms, §20A appears to time-bar only those actions based on a violation of the statute; that is, those seeking treble damages and attorney’s fees. As the language of §20A suggests, those provisions do not apply in actions to recover overtime wages when a plaintiff refrains from rolling out the treble-damages-plus-attorney’s-fees artillery provided in §1B of the statute, and where she does not allege common law claims such as breach of contract

In Mogilevsky v. Bally Total Fitness Corp., supra, the Federal District Court declined in a bench trial to find that guidelines in an employee handbook (which itself disclaimed that it was intended to form a separate contract) constituted a contract. Id. at 167. The Court thus ruled that such a document did not give rise to a breach of contract claim apart from the cause of action set out in the federal and statute statutes. Id. In so doing, that Court, which did not consider the issue in the context of a motion to dismiss, implicitly recognized at least the possibility of a viable common law claim existing apart from the statutorily created claim. Further, [153]*153when our Legislature intends to make a statutory remedy exclusive, it has done so by explicit language.7 Such language is conspicuously absent from G.L.c. 151, §§1A and IB. See Lowry v. Klemm, 446 Mass. 572, 579-580 (2006) (exclusivity provisions of G.Lc. 151B, §9 and c. 214, §1C prohibit plaintiffs from framing sexual harassment as violation of other statutes or as common law claim); King v. Driscoll, 418 Mass. 576, 584 n.7 (1994) (G.L.c. 151, §9(1) provides that statutory redress for employment termination in violation of public policy is exclusive). This Division is not inclined to read G.L.c. 151, §§1A and IB as preempting all common law claims for unpaid overtime wages without a clear mandate from the Legislature to do so.

The burden for a plaintiff’s defeating a Mass. R Civ. E, Rule 12(b) (6) is “minimal.” Richards v. Arteva Specialties S.A.R.L., 66 Mass. App. Ct. 726, 730 (2006), citing, interalia, Ciardi v. F. Hoffman-LaRoche, 436 Mass. 53, 55 (2002). More picturesquely, a complaint survives if it limns “the bare silhouette” of a claim. Stevens v. Nagel, 64 Mass. App. Ct. 136, 140 (2005). “[A] complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of [her] claim which would entitle [her] to relief [emphasis supplied].” Richards, supra, at 730, quoting Nader v. Citron, 372 Mass. 96, 98 (1977). See also, e.g., Gasior v. Massachusetts Gen. Hosp., 446 Mass. 645, 647 (2006). Furthermore, the court takes as true the allegations of the complaint, as well as inferences drawn from them, in the plaintiff’s favor. Id. Additionally, a complaint withstands a motion to dismiss if it appears a plaintiff might be entitled to any form of relief, even though the particular relief demanded and the theory underlying it do not appear compatible with each other or with an applicable statute. Harvard Law School Coalition for Civil Rights v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 413 Mass. 66, 71 (1992). Of particular relevance here is the notion that “indulgent reading of the complaint... includes] indulgence for the period of limitations.” Quinn v. Walsh, 49 Mass. App. Ct. 696, 699 (2000). Even a complaint satisfying these liberal standards could, of course, face dismissal for having been untimely filed. See, e.g., Ellis and Ellis v. Demers, 2004 Mass. App. Div. 7, 8. Such reasoning probably underlay the allowance of Miller’s motion in this case.

Spears’ and Gabriel’s complaint was silent as to their precise employment arrangements, averring only that Miller employed them. That allegation signifies that they were at least at-will employees. See Gasior v. Massachusetts Gen. Hosp., supra, at 650.

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2006 Mass. App. Div. 151, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/spears-v-miller-massdistctapp-2006.