Court Opinion

ID: 9585127
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:56:40.271991+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:28:59.033306
License: Public Domain

LANDAU, J.,
concurring in part; dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority’s disposition of defendant’s first two assignments of error. Where I part company with *538the majority is in its conclusion that a statutory penalty is a “wage” within the meaning of ORS 652.200(2), so that an “action for the collection of wages” can include an action for the collection of a statutory penalty alone. In my view, that construction cannot be squared with the ordinary meaning of the term “wages.” Nor can it be squared with the statutory context in which the term is used. I therefore respectfully dissent from the affirmance of the award of attorney fees.
The language that is in dispute is as follows:
“In any action for the collection of wages, if it is shown that the wages were not paid for a period of 48 hours * * * after the same became due and payable, the court shall upon entering judgment for the plaintiff, include in such judgment, in addition to the costs and disbursements otherwise prescribed by statute, a reasonable sum for attorney fees at trial and on appeal for prosecuting said action[.]”
ORS 652.200(2). The question is whether her successful action to collect the statutory penalty satisfies the statutory prerequisites for obtaining attorney fees. I conclude that it does not. In brief, a penalty is not a “wage,” certainly not a wage that became due and payable at any identifiable period of time before imposition by a court of law. As a result, plaintiffs action cannot properly be characterized as an action for the collection of “wages” that were not paid for a period of 48 hours.
I begin with the meaning of the term “wage.” In construing the meaning of the term we must apply its ordinary meaning unless there is clear evidence in the statute that the legislature meant something else. PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 317 Or 606, 610, 859 P2d 1143 (1993) (“words of common usage typically should be given their plain, natural and ordinary meaning”); Welliver Welding Works v. Farmen, 133 Or App 203, 208, 890 P2d 429 (1995) (courts must give statutory terms their ordinary meaning “unless there is a clear indication that some other meaning was intended”); SAIF v. Meredith, 104 Or App 570, 574, 802 P2d 95 (1990) (“in the absence of a clear legislative intent to the contrary, the court is bound to give to the words of a statute their natural and ordinary meaning”).
*539The natural and ordinary meaning of the term “wages” is undisputed. The majority concedes that the term ordinarily means “pledge or payment * * * for labor or services.” Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary, 2568 (unabridged ed 1993). In fact, that is precisely how the Supreme Court and we have defined the term as it is used in ORS 652.200(2). In Hekker v. Sabre Construction Co., 265 Or 552, 559-60, 510 P2d 347 (1973), the Supreme Court held that, as used in ORS 652.200(2), “wages” means compensation for services, including compensation in the form of commissions. Likewise, in Kantor v. Boise Cascade Corp., 75 Or App 698, 709, 708 P2d 356 (1985), rev den 300 Or 506 (1986), we construed the term as used in the same statute to mean “any compensation for an employe[eJ’s services.”
That is also how the legislature has defined the term “wages” elsewhere in the employment statutes. ORS 652.210(3), for example, defines “wages” as “all compensation for performance of service by an employee[.]” Indeed, everywhere the term is expressly defined in the Oregon Revised Statutes, it means compensation for services rendered. See, e.g., ORS 267.380(1)(c) (“ ‘[wjages’ means remuneration for services performed by an employee for the employer”); ORS 292.014(2) (“ ‘[sjalaries and wages’ means payments to officers and employees of a state agency for services rendered”); ORS 316.162(3) (“ ‘[wjages’ means remuneration for services performed by an employee for an employer”); ORS 652.190 (“ ‘wages’ means compensation of employees based on time worked or output of production and includes every form of remuneration payable for a given period to an individual for personal services”); ORS 653.010(11) (“ ‘[wjages’ means compensation due to an employee by reason of employment”); ORS 656.005(29) (“ ‘[wjages’ means the money rate at which the service rendered is recompensed”); ORS 657.105(1) (“ ‘wages’ means all remuneration for employment”). In each case, the legislature has used the term in its natural, ordinary sense of compensation for services rendered.
By no stretch of the imagination is a statutory penalty a “wage” in the ordinary sense. An employee does not earn an employer’s penalty. It is not payment for any labor or *540service that the employee has rendered. It is instead a consequence of an employer’s failure to comply with a legal obligation. Its purpose is punishment of the employer, not compensation of the employee. See Nordling v. Johnston, 205 Or 315, 323-26, 283 P2d 994, 287 P2d 420 (1955) (purpose of ORS 652.150, providing penalty for failing timely to pay “wages” is punitive, not compensatory). Thus, when plaintiff brought this action for recovery solely of a statutory penalty, she did not bring an action for the collection of “wages.” She brought an action for the collection of a penalty. There is no statutory provision for an award of attorney fees in an action for the collection of a penalty.
What is more, ORS 652.200(2) makes clear that attorney fees may be recovered only if the employer fails to pay wages more than 48 hours after they became “due and payable.” No statute requires that the penalty created by ORS 652.150 must be paid on any particular date. Apparently that is because the legislature intended the statutory penalty created by ORS 652.150 not to become due and payable until imposed by a court. The statute expressly provides that an employer “may avoid liability for the penalty by showing financial inability to pay the wages or compensation at the time they accrued.” Thus, failure to pay a wage does not, by itself, secure entitlement to a penalty. The court must determine the extent to which a plaintiff is entitled to it first. That being the case, an employee cannot collect attorney fees for “untimely” payment of a penalty before it has been determined that the penalty, in fact, is due at all.
The majority nevertheless insists that plaintiff did initiate this action for the collection of “wages.” It does so, however, by imbuing the term with a meaning that is contrary to common usage, contrary to the manner in which the term is used in the statute at issue, and contrary to the manner in which the term is used in every single other statute in which the word has been defined by the Oregon Legislature.
At the outset, let me make clear that I do not contend that the legislature lacks the authority to define terms as it pleases. The legislature may expressly define “wages” to mean anything within its constitutional authority. But if it *541has not done so, I think that — out of respect for the legislature and the language that it chose to enact — we should be wary of imposing a highly unusual construction merely because we speculate that is what the legislature might have intended but did not actually say. That is why we are required to apply ordinary meaning unless it is clear that the legislature intended a contrary meaning. Welliver Welding Works, 133 Or App at 208; Meredith, 104 Or App at 574.
The majority finds such clarity in ORS 652.150, which defines the penalty itself as a continuation of wages. According to the majority, if the penalty is defined as a continuation of wages, then it follows that the penalty is a wage. 163 Or App at 534. The statute does, indeed, say that if an employer fails to pay a wage when due, then “the wages or compensation shall continue” for up to 30 days. The question is whether, in so doing, the legislature intended for us to understand that the meaning of the term “wage” itself implicitly was redefined to mean penalties, or instead that the continuation of the wages provides the means of calculating the total penalty that the employer may be assessed. In my view, only the latter makes sense.
If the majority is correct that the penalty itself is a “wage,” then, according to the terms of a statute, every day that the penalty is not paid, the employer may become liable for up to an additional 30 days of wages as a penalty. With each day the employer fails to pay the penalty — because it is a “wage” — the employer becomes liable for up to 30 days additional wages as a further penalty. And with each day that the employer fails to pay that penalty, the employer becomes liable for up to 30 days of additional wages, ad infin-itum. The 30-day limit on the accumulated penalties thus becomes entirely illusory, contrary to the express language of the statute. The majority fails to explain how its construction can avoid leading to that obviously unintended conundrum.
Moreover, the majority’s construction cannot be reconciled with ORS 652.200(2), which provides that the action for the collection of wages must involve wages that were not paid more than 48 hours after they became due and payable. As I have noted, no statute specifies a due date for the statutory penalty provided for in ORS 652.150. If anything, it is *542not due until imposed by the court. Thus, even if in the abstract the term “wage” reasonably could be construed to include penalties, it could not within the meaning of ORS 652.200(2).
The majority responds that there is no basis for my “assumption” that the employer must have failed to timely pay the wages that are the subject of the collection action. 163 Or App at 535.1 assume nothing, however. I simply read the statute, which says that there must be an “action for the collection of wages, if it is shown that the wages were not paid for a period of 48 hours” after they became due and payable. ORS 652.200(2) (emphasis added).
The majority rejoins that, although an action for the collection of “wages” refers to the collection of penalties, the immediately following reference to “the wages” actually means not penalties but the earned wages that originally were unpaid when due and payable. That reading is grammatically untenable. See, e.g., Anderson v. Jensen Racing, Inc., 324 Or 570, 578-79, 931 P2d 763 (1997) (the definite article “the” functions as an adjective to denote a particular, specified thing, not a general, unspecified class of things); Osborn v. PSRB, 325 Or 135, 143 n 7, 934 P2d 391 (1997) (drawing distinction between use of definite and indefinite articles). It also requires that we read the same term “wages” to mean two different things in the same sentence, something that we generally regard as highly unlikely. See, e.g., PGE, 317 Or at 611 (“use of the same term throughout a statute indicates that the term has the same meaning throughout the statute”); State v. Allison, 143 Or App 241, 255, 923 P2d 1224 (1996) (rejecting suggestion that statutory term means two different things in same sentence); State v. Jones, 109 Or App 235, 238 n 3, 818 P2d 1286 (1991) (“Presumably, the legislature intended the phrase to carry the same meaning every time it used it in the same sentence.”).
The majority also claims support for its construction from the definition of “wage claims” that may be brought by the Bureau of Labor and Industries, which claims may include requests for “wages, compensation, damages or civil penalties provided by law to employees in connection with a claim for unpaid wages.” ORS 652.320(9). According to the *543majority, because a wage claim may include a demand for civil penalties, a “wage” must include civil penalties. The argument cannot be squared with the language of the very statute on which the majority relies. To begin with, the statute itself makes clear that the civil penalty is not itself a “wage,” for it refers to the penalty separately from the term “wage.” Furthermore, the statute specifies that the penalty may be recovered only to the extent that the law provides for recovery of a penalty “in connection with a claim for unpaid wages.” ORS 652.320(9) (emphasis added). The fact that the law provides for the recovery of a penalty “in connection” with a wage claim does not mean that the penalty is itself a “wage.” The majority’s argument is simply illogical.
The majority finally claims support, if cautiously, from two prior decisions in which we affirmed on other grounds an award of attorney fees under ORS 652.200(2) in cases in which the underlying claim apparently was for civil penalties only. The majority is right to be cautious. In both Kling v. Exxon Corp., 74 Or App 399, 703 P2d 1021 (1985), and Pope v. Judicial Dept., 79 Or App 732, 721 P2d 462 (1986), the issue before us in this case was neither briefed nor argued, much less addressed by this court. I would not depart from the plain meaning of a statutory term on the basis of decisions of this court that did not even address the meaning of the statutory terms involved.
In short, the meaning of the term “wages” is not at all unclear. It has a natural, ordinary meaning, one that the legislature consistently has used throughout the Oregon Revised Statutes. That meaning should be used in the construction of ORS 652.200(2) unless there is clear evidence in the text of the statute and its context that the legislature intended some other meaning. There is no such clear evidence in the statute or elsewhere. An action for the “collection of wages” cannot reasonably be construed to mean an action for the collection of statutory penalties, and the majority errs in concluding otherwise.
Deits, C. J., and Brewer, J., join in this dissent.