Court Opinion

ID: 9595375
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:39:37.924487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:35.829302
License: Public Domain

CADY, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result, but write separately to address two issues not raised by the parties that could be important in properly confining the application and scope of the Iowa Wage Payment Collection Law.
First, this is not the type of case in which Iowa courts traditionally use its law to resolve. The plaintiff is a nonresident. The defendant is a' nonresident. The dispute involved wages payable in another state. Under such circumstances, the choice of law doctrine would generally temper our enthusiasm to apply our law and direct us to consider the law of the state in which the parties reside.
Second, the wage dispute in this case was lumped into a single claim, but actually involved four separate employment ac*589tivities. The majority of these activities occurred in Missouri, and only one occurred in Iowa. Although our legislature may have a strong interest to enact a wage dispute law to protect nonresidents when they cross our border to perform work in Iowa, it would have no interest in protecting nonresidents in those instances where they perform work outside of Iowa. See Killian v. McCulloch, 873 F.Supp. 938, 942 (E.D.Pa.1995) (“The legislature has a strong interest in enacting legislation to protect those who work in the Commonwealth, but has almost no interest in extending that protection to those who work outside Pennsylvania.”). Consequently, I would hold that a wage claim involving out-of-state parties should be limited to those specific disputes that involve work performed in Iowa, and exclude those disputes involving work performed outside Iowa. We have no business extending the protections of our law in favor of one nonresident against another nonresident involving disputes occurring outside Iowa. Moreover, the fact that one of the individual disputes in this case involved wages earned in Iowa would not transform the other disputes involving wages earned in Missouri into an Iowa dispute.
CARTER, and TERNUS, JJ., join this special concurrence.