Rejecting a legal theory widely accepted in many jurisdictions, namely that statutory wage-and-hour laws are intended to preempt claims for alleged unpaid compensation brought pursuant to older, less-specific common law theories, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled last month that an employee whose wage claims may well be time barred under the Massachusetts Wage Act can

An unsettled fertile area of litigation in New York has been the circumstances under which various types of incentive compensation—such as bonuses—become “earned” as wages and thus entitled to the protections of the New York Labor Law, which provide greater remedies than common law claims for breach of contract.  In a recent decision, New York’s