CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals sided with the circuit court in declaring that an employer made errors and violated the state's Wage Payment and Collection Act.
"Accordingly, we find no error or abuse of discretion in the circuit court's decision to bind Fairmont Tools to its agreement," Justice John Hutchison wrote in the majority opinion.
In this appeal from Marion Circuit Court, the Supreme Court considered a series of orders entered under the West Virginia Wage Payment and Collection Act (WPCA).
"The Legislature designed the WPCA to require an employer to regularly pay employees their full wages and restrict an employer’s ability to withhold a portion of employees’ paychecks," Hutchison wrote. "In this appeal, we examine one such heavily regulated withholding: the authorized wage assignment. For an employee to properly assign wages to an employer, the WPCA specifies that there must be a writing that meets a list of conditions, and in the absence of any one of these conditions the assignment is invalid and unenforceable."
In the case at hand, an employer made withholdings from the wages of its employees that met the WPCA’s definition of an assignment, but never procured from its employees a writing that complied with the conditions set in the WPCA.
"After an employee filed a class-action suit to recoup those withholdings, the employer entered into a written agreement stipulating to the method the circuit court would use to calculate certain damages if the circuit court declared the withholdings violated the WPCA," Hutchison wrote. "Thereafter, the circuit court entered an order finding the employer liable for violating the WPCA. In light of the stipulations on damages, the circuit court later entered orders that awarded the employees the wages improperly taken from their paychecks, liquidated damages, attorney’s fees, and costs."
The employer then appealed the circuit court’s orders.
Hutchison affirmed the circuit court's order, stating that the Supreme Court did not find any errors.
In his dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Evan Jenkins wrote that he believed the majority improperly overruled precedent.
"In this case, the majority has concluded that an employer who gave its employees advances on their salaries, by allowing them to use the employer’s accounts to voluntarily purchase various items and services for their personal use and convenience, violated the Wage Payment and Collection Act by not treating the advances as wage assignments," Jenkins wrote. "The majority has additionally concluded that the circuit court did not err in resolving the employer’s breach of contract and unjust enrichment counterclaims by granting summary judgment to the employees on those issues."
Jenkins disagreed with this opinion. He stated that he would have revered the circuit court's summary judgment order and remanded the case for further consideration.
"Because I believe the majority has improperly overruled this Court’s precedent in finding that the salary advances were wage assignments, and wrongly upheld the circuit court’s award of summary judgment as to the employer’s claims for breach of contract and unjust enrichment, I respectfully dissent," Jenkins wrote.