180 | Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. © 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Under Massachusetts law, treble damages are mandatory for most wage and hour violations, and the employer is required to pay the plaintiff-employee three times the actual “lost wages” proven in any case in which liability is established.1123 The treble damages statute applies to nonpayment of wages claims, Tip Statute violations, Independent Contractor Statute violations, improper expenditure of withholdings, improper deductions for tardiness or transportation services, minimum wage and overtime violations, failure to keep accurate payroll records, and taking wages through threats or force.1124 In 2012, the First Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the treble damages statute. In Matamoros v. Starbucks Corporation, the defendant argued that the mandatory nature of the treble damages provision violated due process principles.1125 The First Circuit held that treble damages do not create the kind of due process concerns that are implicated by jury-awarded punitive damages, because the legislature had characterized those mandatory damages as “liquidated,” which are not punitive. The court reasoned that, in other contexts such as the FLSA, liquidated damages have been found to act as a stand-in for interest and other incidental damages.1126 The transforming of previously punitive treble damages to mandatory liquidated damages, the court concluded, was the legislative method of avoiding a constitutionality concern.1127 The First Circuit’s decision, however, addressed only federal due process principles, and did not address the viability of mandatory treble damages under the Massachusetts Constitution.1128 Further, the decision predated the SJC’s decisions in Reuter v. City of Methuen and George v. National Water Main Cleaning Company, discussed below. In Reuter,1129 the SJC held that a plaintiff is entitled to trebling of lost wages even where the employer paid owed the plaintiff’s final wages late but before the filing of a court complaint. Prior to that decision, several trial courts had held in this circumstance that a prevailing plaintiff could only recover interest on the late payment and the interest could be trebled.1130 Relying on language in the Wage Act that “[t]he defendant shall not set up as a defen[s]e a payment of wages after the bringing of the complaint,” these trial courts had reasoned that the late payment of wages by an employer prior to the bringing of a complaint was not subject to trebling. In Reuter, the plaintiff was terminated after she was convicted of larceny, and the defendant paid her unused where the commissions remained contingent due to a reason other than continued employment at the time of the plaintiff’s termination. 1123 M.G.L. ch. 149, § 150. 1124 M.G.L. ch. 149, § 150. 1125 Matamoros, 699 F.3d at 141. 1126 Id. One Massachusetts trial court has used this same reasoning to deny an award of prejudgment interest to a plaintiff in a wage case. See Feygina, 2013 WL 2776929, at *9 (holding that plaintiff “would get an unfair windfall if she recovered both treble damages as liquidated damages and prejudgment interest” because both types of damages serve the same purpose). 1127 Travers, at 549. 1128 Matamoros, 699 F.3d at 141. 1129 489 Mass. 465 (2022). 1130 See, e.g., Dobin, 2003 WL 22454602; Clermont, 102 F. Supp. 3d 353; Littlefield v. Adcole Corp., No. ESCV201500017, 2015 WL 5057652 (Mass. Super. June 18, 2015).
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