Court orders Roxbury landscaper to pay $400,000 in back wages, damages

ROXBURY — A Morris County landscaping company must pay $400,000 after it did not properly compensate employees for working overtime during a three-year period, a federal court ruled this week.

An investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division found that Fullerton Landscapes LLC, operating as Fullerton Landscape Architects, failed to pay 32 employees at a time-and-a-half rate for working more than 40 hours in a week. The court ordered the company, owned by Douglas B. Fullerton, to pay $200,000 in overtime back wages and another $200,000 in liquidated damage to the affected workers.

The investigation focused on unpaid wages between August 24, 2016 and August 23, 2019.

Half of the $400,000 will be paid to those employees as back wages. They will collect the other half as "an equal amount in liquidated damages," a DOL announcement states.

“Paying straight-time rates or rates below straight time for overtime hours worked shortchanges workers of the hard-earned wages they need to make ends meet,” said Wage and Hour District Director Paula Ruffin in Mountainside. “Unfortunately, these types of violations are common in the landscaping services industry."

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"Fullerton fully supports their employees and will continue to do so," Fullerton attorney Robert Chewning said in response to the announcement.

The complaint, filed June 3, 2021, details multiple instances of employees being paid less than their standard hourly rate despite working overtime. In one week in 2017, the document states, an employee who was normally paid $15 per hour worked 50.5 hours and was paid $707.47, for a rate of just over $14 per hour.

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This week's ruling indicates that Fullerton Landscapes acknowledges and admits to certain violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and agrees to the judgment "without contest."

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The Wage and Hour Division recovered $1.2 million for more than 1,000 workers in the landscaping services industry in fiscal 2021, the DOL stated.

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com Twitter: @wwesthoven

This article originally appeared on Morristown Daily Record: Roxbury unpaid wages settlement: Landscaper to pay overtime, damages