Opinion
Court of Appeals Case No. 21A-SC-7
08-25-2021
James M. PRATER, III, Appellant-Plaintiff, v. HARRIS & SONS LANDSCAPING, LLC, Appellee-Defendant.
Attorney for Appellant: Jay Meisenhelder, Jay Meisenhelder Employment & Civil, Rights Legal Services, P.C., Indianapolis, Indiana Attorney for Appellee: Randall R. Shouse, Shouse & Langlois, Indianapolis, Indiana
Attorney for Appellant: Jay Meisenhelder, Jay Meisenhelder Employment & Civil, Rights Legal Services, P.C., Indianapolis, Indiana
Attorney for Appellee: Randall R. Shouse, Shouse & Langlois, Indianapolis, Indiana
Najam, Judge.
Statement of the Case
[1] James M. Prater, III appeals the small claims court's award of damages and attorney's fees following the court's judgment for Prater on his claim against Harris & Sons Landscaping, LLC ("Harris"). Prater raises two issues for our review, which we consolidate and restate as whether the court erred when it declined to award Prater the full amount he sought in damages and attorney's fees. We affirm.
Facts and Procedural History
[2] Sometime prior to the fall of 2019, Robert Harris ("Robert"), the owner of Harris, hired Prater to work as a laborer for the landscaping business. When Prater was hired, Robert had him sign a copy of the company handbook. The company handbook stated that "[c]osts associated with damages" to company equipment or customers’ property "will be deducted from employees’ paychecks if the site supervisor and/or owner sees fit." Tr. Vol. 2 at 32-33.
Our pagination of the Transcript is based on the .pdf pagination.
[3] After Prater had done some landscaping work for a customer in the fall of 2019, the customer reported to Robert that Prater had damaged her gate. Harris paid $356.25 to repair the gate and then deducted $356.25 from two of Prater's paychecks.
[4] Prater filed a notice of claim in the small claims court against Harris and alleged that Harris had illegally deducted the $356.25 from his paychecks. In his notice of claim, Prater sought damages of $1,068.75, or three times the amount alleged to have been illegally deducted from his paychecks, plus attorney's fees and costs. "About the same time" as Prater filed his notice of claim, Harris paid Prater the $356.25, a payment which Prater accepted. Id. at 23.
[5] However, Prater continued to prosecute his claim for additional damages and attorney's fees. At the hearing, there was no dispute that the customer's gate had been damaged, that Harris had paid $356.25 to repair the gate, or that Harris had deducted $356.25 from Prater's pay for that property damage. And, while Prater disputed that he had caused the damage to the gate, the basis of his claim was that the deductions from his pay had been illegal regardless of whether he had damaged the gate. Further, when Prater testified that Harris had paid and he had accepted the $356.25 payment, Prater's counsel then clarified for the court that that payment should "be an offset against" the $1,068.75 demand in the notice of claim. Id. at 25.
[6] Prater's claim asserted that the deduction that Harris had taken for damage to the gate violated the Indiana Wage Deduction Act, and he sought liquidated damages and attorney's fees under Indiana Code Section 22-2-5-2. That statute provides that an employer that fails to pay an employee's wages
Although Prater sued under the Wage Deduction Act, his claim for liquidated damages is under the Wage Payment Statute, Indiana Code Section 22-2-5-2.
shall be liable to the employee for the amount of unpaid wages, and the amount may be recovered in any court having jurisdiction of a suit to recover the amount due to the employee. The court shall order as costs in the case a reasonable fee for the plaintiff's attorney and court costs. In addition, if the court in any such suit determines that the [employer] that failed to pay the employee ... was not acting in good faith, the court shall order, as liquidated damages for the failure to pay wages, that the employee be paid an amount equal to two (2) times the amount of wages due the employee.
(Emphasis added.)
[7] Relying on that language, Prater argued that the statute placed the burden on Harris to show, as an affirmative defense, that it had acted in good faith in failing to pay Prater's full wages. The court did not rule on Prater's argument regarding the burden of proof, however, and Prater then called Robert as a witness. Robert testified about the contents of the company handbook, Prater's signing of the handbook, and Robert's deductions of the $356.25 from Prater's pay pursuant to the policies stated in the handbook. Prater then rested his case.
[8] The court then instructed Harris to proceed with its case. Harris kept Robert as the witness and, on direct examination by Harris’ counsel, Robert added that he had in fact paid $438 to repair the fence, although the actual payment came after he had already deducted the $356.25 from Prater's paychecks. He also stated that he had deducted the $356.25 from two of Prater's paychecks instead of one to make the total payment easier on Prater. And he testified that Prater had told him that Prater "wouldn't have had a problem" with the deductions "had [Robert] taken [the deductions] over a longer period of time." Tr. Vol. 2 at 45. Robert replied, "Yes," when asked whether he "exercised good faith in deducting the wages" as provided in the handbook because he "reasonably believed that Mr. Prater damaged the customer's fence." Id. at 52.
[9] At the close of the hearing, Prater's counsel requested nearly $8,000 in attorney's fees and expenses for more than twenty-two hours of work. The court had numerous questions about the itemized list of legal services and the costs for those services, such as counsel's charge of about two and one-half hours and $800 attributed to "locating my client" and about $100 per interrogatory question in a small claims case. Id. at 68-70. Counsel for Harris asserted that the attorney's fee request was "way out of proportion" to the $356.25 in damages, and the court responded, "obviously I have concerns about the reasonableness and the necessity of this kind of time on a small claims case." Id. at 71. And Prater's counsel properly recognized that the court could reduce any fees "if it feels that something is unreasonable." Id. at 69. The court added, "this isn't a complicated case." Id. at 71.
At the time of the proceedings before the small claims court, Indiana Code 33-34-3-2 (2020) provided that Marion County's small claims courts had original and concurrent jurisdiction in all civil cases "founded on contract or tort in which the debt or damage claimed does not exceed eight thousand dollars ($8,000), not including interest or attorney's fees."
[10] After taking the matter under advisement, the court entered judgment for Prater in the amount of $356.25 in damages and $300 in attorney's fees. The court ordered that Harris receive a credit against the total judgment for the $356.25 payment already paid and accepted by Prater. And the court declined to find that Harris was not acting in good faith under Indiana Code Section 22-2-5-2 when it had deducted the $356.25 from Prater's pay. Thus, the court declined to award liquidated damages or to award nearly $8,000 in attorney's fees. This appeal ensued.
The court implicitly denied Harris’ counterclaim against Prater.
Discussion and Decision
Standard of Review
[11] Prater appeals from the small claims court's judgment. Judgments in small claims actions are "subject to review as prescribed by relevant Indiana rules and statutes." Ind. Small Claims Rule 11(A). Under Indiana Trial Rule 52(A), the clearly erroneous standard applies to appellate review of facts determined in a bench trial with due regard given to the opportunity of the small claims court to assess witness credibility. Trinity Homes, LLC v. Fang , 848 N.E.2d 1065, 1067 (Ind. 2006). This "deferential standard of review is particularly important in small claims actions, where trials are ‘informal, with the sole objective of dispensing speedy justice between the parties according to the rules of substantive law.’ " Id. at 1067-68 (quoting City of Dunkirk Water & Sewage Dep't v. Hall , 657 N.E.2d 115, 116 (Ind. 1995) ). Although the method of proof may be informal, the parties in a small claims court bear the same burdens of proof as they would in a regular civil action on the same issues. LTL Truck Serv. LLC v. Safeguard, Inc. , 817 N.E.2d 664, 668 (Ind. Ct. App. 2004). It is incumbent upon the party who bears the burden of proof to demonstrate that it is entitled to the recovery sought. Id. Pure questions of law are reviewed de novo. Trinity Homes , 848 N.E.2d at 1068.
Prater Has Not Shown that the Court Erroneously Shifted the Burden of Proof or that Harris Failed to Meet Any Burden it May Have Had
[12] Prater first asserts that the small claims court erred as a matter of law because, under Indiana Code Section 22-2-5-2, the burden of proving whether Harris acted in good faith in deducting the $356.25 from Prater's wages was on Harris. Prater devotes the first eight pages of his Argument in his Appellant's Brief to explain why Harris’ deductions were contrary to law and why the burden of proof to show that those deductions were in good faith should have been on Harris. However, Prater does not address the fact that the small claims court never expressly ruled on which party had the burden of proof. More importantly, Prater does not acknowledge that, in its case-in-chief, Harris presented evidence that Robert acted in good faith. Therefore, Prater has not met his burden on appeal to show that there is reversible error on this issue, and we affirm the court's judgment that Robert did not act with an absence of good faith and that Prater is not entitled to liquidated damages under the Indiana Code Section 22-2-5-2.
In his brief, Prater asserts that there is no Indiana case law that decides whether the employer or employee bears the burden of proof in the showing of good faith under the Indiana Code Section 22-2-5-2, but he alleges that similar statutory language under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act places the burden of proof on the employer.
Prater's Argument Regarding Attorney's Fees is Merely a Request for this Court to Reweigh the Evidence
[13] Prater also asserts on appeal that the trial court erred when it awarded him only $300 in attorney's fees. We review a trial court's award of attorney's fees for an abuse of discretion. River Ridge Dev. Auth. v. Outfront Media, LLC , 146 N.E.3d 906, 912 (Ind. 2020). An abuse of discretion occurs when the court's decision either clearly contravenes the logic and effect of the facts and circumstances before the court, or the court misinterprets the law. Id.
[14] Prater's argument does not acknowledge or apply our abuse of discretion standard of review but, instead, attempts to relitigate his demand for nearly $8,000 in attorney's fees. Prater's argument merely asks this Court to substitute its judgment for that of the small claims court, which we will not do. The statute provides for "a reasonable fee for the plaintiff's attorney," I.C. § 22-2-5-2, and the court plainly thought Prater's fee request was unreasonable given that "this isn't a complicated case," Tr. Vol. 2 at 71, an assessment with which we agree. The court properly exercised its discretion. Prater has not shown that the court's award of $300 in attorney's fees is either contrary to the logic and effect of the facts and circumstances before the court or that the court misinterpreted the law. Therefore, we also affirm the judgment on this issue.
[15] Affirmed.
Riley, J., and Brown, J., concur.