holding that the MWPCL should be read broadly to confer a private cause of action for unauthorized deductions under section 3-503
How later courts described this case
- holding that the MWPCL should be read broadly to confer a private cause of action for unauthorized deductions under section 3-503
- concluding that employees have a right to bring a private cause of action under the MWPCL to recover unlawfully withheld wages that result from miscalculating the amount of wages exempt from garnishment
- holding that the MWPCL generally provides an employee with a cause of action against an employer for both the failure to pay wages on time and for “the refusal of employers to pay wages lawfully due.”
- holding that the MWPCL provides an employee with a cause of action against an employer for both the failure to pay wages on time and for “the refusal of employers to pay wages lawfully due”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
McDONALD, J.,
concurring.
I join the Court’s very clear and well reasoned opinion. I write separately just to note that, while the Circuit Court properly exercised its discretion in this case to deny certification of a class for the reasons identified in the Court’s opinion, other claims under the Wage Payment and Collection Law may be amenable to prosecution as class actions. These are often cases in which multiple individual employees may each have a claim — claims that are small compared to many that we see, but that may be very significant to the individual employees — against the same defendant for very similar reasons. Indeed, the closely related wage and hour laws themselves contemplate the consolidation of similar individual claims *567 against one employer in a single action. See Maryland Code, Labor & Employment Article, § 3 — 427(b)(3); 29 U.S.C. § 216 (b).