Prevailing wages requirements expanded in NJ

NJ Governor Jon S. Corzine today signed an executive order regarding prevailing wage requirements for contractors who provide building services for State-leased government buildings.

The executive order ensures that prevailing wage requirements apply to situations where the State is a tenant in the building but the building owner, rather than the State, contracts for the provision of building services.

Important for wage and hour damage calculations

Provision will require:

... that the workers performing such building services shall be paid not less than the applicable prevailing wage rates as ascertained by the lessor from the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development, and that the contractor shall provide to each such worker individual written notification every six months of the prevailing wage rates for each classification involved in the contractor’s performance of building services;

Record keeping:

(i) keep accurate records showing the name, classification, and actual hourly rate of wages and any benefits paid to each worker employed by the contractor or subcontractor to perform building services in the property of premises leased by the State;
(ii) preserve those records for two years after the date of payment;
and (iii) make the contracts and the records available at all reasonable hours to the inspection of the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development and to any other party to the lease;

Economist Daubert Watch: Sept. 24, 2007, Part I

Objection to defendant's statistical report is not enough to kick report and defeat summary judgement

(see dauberttracker.com for more details)

In Contreras vs. Chertoff, U.S. District Court, D.C., this class action discrimination case was before the district court on defendant's renewed motion for summary judgment. The plaintiffs sought to represent a class of current and former Customs Service agents alleging discrimination on the basis of national origin in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Defendant submitted an extensive expert analysis of the discipline files to address the question of whether or not Hispanic customs agents received harsher disciplinary treatment than similarly situated white customs agents. The defendant's concluded that because no disciplined Hispanic and white customs agents were similarly situated, a proper statistical comparison was impossible. Furthermore, even using alternative statistical analysis, there was no evidence indicating discrimination against Hispanic agents in the disciplinary context.

Plaintiffs apparently discovered nothing among these thousands of documents worth presenting to the court to substantiate their claims of discrimination. Instead, their opposition to the renewed motion for summary judgment only complained again that defendant's analysis was inadequate. The plaintiffs' challenged the reliability of the databases relied upon by defendant's expert and the expert's methodology in analyzing the data.

Plaintiffs did not present statistical evidence supporting their claims of discrimination. Instead, they offered studies of Customs employment practices, anecdotal evidence from the named plaintiffs, an expert disputing the defendant's analysis, and the testimony of an expert in management and equal opportunity practices.

Plaintiffs' responses to defendant's motions for summary judgment were insufficient to defeat defendant's renewed motion.

Court says 'short shift' bonus violates CA OT rules

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William MacLaughlin has ruled that Huntington Memorial Hospital violated California Labor Code § 510 by paying its nurses and other employees a lower, hourly, rate-of-pay when they worked overtime shifts of 10 hours or more in a day

Court, like in many other cases, says that the overtimeshift bonus must be rolled into the regular rate in calculating OT losses.

Undocumented worker wage hour lawsuit survives

Court says:

"Although defendants have clearly articulated the tension between the competing policy considerations of the IRCA, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the relevant provisions of New York's Labor Law, the cases cited by defendants in support of their motion do not establish that they are entitled to dismissal of Huerta's complaint.

"No court has held that an undocumented alien may be deprived of wages for work already performed." Majlinger v. Cassino Contracting Corp., 25 AD3d 14, 26, 802 N.Y.S.2d 56 (2d Dep't, 2005), aff'd sub nom. Balbuena v. IDR Realty LLC, supra." Jara v. Strong Steel Doors, SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, KINGS COUNTY, 2007 NY Slip Op 51755U; 2007 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 6355, September 12, 2007.

Where's the luv?

Not all have luv for the work economists do:

'An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living. ', Nicholas Chamfort, 18th Century writer

'An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible'
Alfred A. Knopf , 20th Century book publisher

'Grossing up' the plaintiffs damages in employment cases, is it right?

From a legal standpoint maybe not, to some economists the answer is yes.

For some economists, whether or not a state allows consideration of income tax adjustments to arrive at earnings losses, the gross-up for excess taxes in employment lawsuits is a separate and necesary calculation. Recent IRS and court rulings cause a prevailing plaintiff not to be made whole if they win.

That is because the lump-sum award will be taxed at a relatively higher rate than would have been paid on the earnings year-by-year. Think: Of winning the taxes on winning the lottery

Several articles address the issue and present a simple (and mathematically correct) procedure & formula for calculing the gross-up.

Tyler J. Bowles, and W. Cris Lewis, “Taxation of Damage Awards: Current Law and Implications,” Litigation Economic Digest, Fall 1996, Volume 2, Number 1, pp. 73-77

Ben-Zion, Barry, "Neutralizing the Adverse Tax Consequences of a Lump-Sum Award in Employment Cases," Journal of Forensic Economics 13(3), 2000, pp. 233-244;

Daubert watch: Court allows economist to testify on damages of Mexican nationals

(see dauberttracker.com)

In a case concerned with wrongful death actions brought by the families of two Mexican Nationals, the defendants argued that the plaintiffs' expert did not have sufficient facts about the two decedents and their families and that the expert used statistics about the US for the purpose of calculating the plaintiffs' losses. The plaintiffs' families lived in Mexico.

The court said that to the extent Dr. Ward might have been able to obtain more complete information, that fact went to the weight to be ascribed to his opinions, not to their admissibility.

The district court noted that the plaintiffs' expert acknowledged at the conclusion of his reports that the plaintiffs resided in Mexico, and that the calculation of the plaintiffs' economic losses must be converted to Mexican standards and that this conversion constituted the application of reasonably reliable principles and methods to the facts known to the plaintiffs' expert.

see:


Alvarado vs. Loftus
Date of Decision: 3/19/2007
Jurisdiction: Federal
Docket Numbers: 05-cv-01666 REB-PAC
Court: Colorado

9/11 Judge puts damages first

(excerpt from NYT)

Little-noticed lawsuits brought against the airlines, security companies move toward trials.

In a reversal of the usual legal procedure, the Judge in some of the first 9-11 cases to go to trial has ordered six trials for damages to take place before any trial for liability.

Instead of focusing on the merits of the cases, the trials will focus instead on the victims' pain and suffering and on the grief of their surviving families. The plaintiffs acknowledge that the biggest difference between the two sides is over the value of pain and suffering. Economic losses are calculated by a mathematical model, and the margin for dispute is relatively small.