Farias v. Rodriguez

Syllabus

The plaintiff, who had been employed as a bartender at restaurants owned and operated by the defendants, appealed from the trial court's judgment granting the defendants' motion to strike his putative class action complaint, which alleged, inter alia, violations of state minimum fair wage regulations (§ 31-62-E3 et seq.) in effect in 2015. Held: The trial court properly granted the defendants' motion to strike that count of the plaintiff's complaint that alleged that the applicable statute (§ 31-68 (a)) gave rise to a private right of action for violations by employers of the recordkeeping requirements in § 31-62-E3 of the regulations, as this court twice previously determined that no private right of action exists for viola- tions of that regulation. The trial court correctly concluded that the plaintiff's complaint was legally insufficient as a matter of law because it was not premised on the applicable state regulation (§ 31-60-2), as required under the legislature's amendment (P.A. 22-134) to the statute (§ 31-60) governing actions for violations of wage laws. Contrary to the plaintiff's claim that the trial court applied P.A. 22-134 retroactively to take away his substantive rights under the 2015 state wage regulations that had previously been in effect, this court concluded that P.A. 22-134 is prospective and did not change the nature of causes of action for a fair minimum wage but, rather, required only that claims filed after September 24, 2022, as were the plaintiff's claims, be adjudicated pursuant to the updated regulatory scheme, namely, § 31-60-2 of the regulations, and the legislature did not create any exceptions in § 31-60 (d) (4) for causes of action that had accrued but were not commenced within the mandatory time frame delineated therein. The trial court correctly determined that any retroactive effect of P.A. 22-134 on the plaintiff's statutory cause of action did not violate his federal and state constitutional rights to due process, as he did n