Opinion ID: 1176472
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Good Faith Dispute

Text: If an employer withholds wages because of a good faith dispute, the court should not award treble damages. A.R.S. § 23-352; see also Abrams. The trial court's findings and conclusions on the good faith issue are both contained in paragraph No. 9 of its Conclusions of Law. Portions of that paragraph are actually findings of fact rather than conclusions of law. Insofar as findings of fact are erroneously included in a paragraph labeled as a conclusion of law, we review them by the standard applied to factual findings. See 9 C. WRIGHT & A. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 2588 (1971). Between the time the Committee announced its recommendation and the time Schade completed work on the Congress some three months later, Diethrich never complained that the Committee's recommended benefits were anything but fair and equitable for an employee of Schade's dedication and ten years of untireless energy and devotion. See Exhibit 27. Indeed, to this day Diethrich has never challenged the specifics of the Committee's recommendation. It would be difficult for Diethrich to argue that the recommendation was unfair or unreasonable. The idea of presenting the matter to a committee, and this particular committee, originated from Diethrich or his lawyer, not from Schade. The Committee was made up of businessmen who were both familiar with the quality of Schade's performance and experts in the very area in question. These businessmen were colleagues of Diethrich's at the Foundation and served with him on its board. He is hardly in a position to attack their competence, fairness or integrity. Of course, despite all this, the Committee could simply have erred or used bad judgment in one manner or another. Diethrich has never specifically suggested that such is the case to the Committee, to his colleagues on the board, to the Foundation, to the trial judge, to the court of appeals or to this court. It was only after Diethrich had obtained the benefit of Schade's work that he announced that the Committee's recommendations for Schade were unreasonably high. Thus, we find that the evidence supports the trial judge's conclusion regarding the absence of a good faith dispute. As the trial judge pointed out, although Diethrich was aware of the Committee's recommendations from almost the very beginning of Schade's performance of the contract, he failed to reveal them to Schade and made no mention of any disagreement with those recommendations until after he allowed Schade to finish performance. Finally, at no time has Diethrich ever advanced any specific ground for his disagreement with the Committee nor explained why its recommendations were unreasonable. The trial judge could and evidently did find ( see Conclusion No. 9) that Diethrich allowed Schade to perform the contract, while intending to exert pressure at the end to force him to accept less than he was entitled. We believe that the treble damages statute was enacted to discourage just such practices. We therefore conclude that the trial court did not abuse the discretion given him by the statute in holding Diethrich liable for treble the amount of the unpaid severance benefits. See Apache East, 119 Ariz. at 313, 580 P.2d at 774.