New England Biz Law Update
A Superior Court judge in Massachusetts has ruled that job applicants needed to show some form of tangible harm in order to proceed with putative class actions alleging that four national retailers violated state law requiring notice on job applications that it’s unlawful for employers to require lie detector tests.
Judge Christopher K. Barry-Smith dismissed putative class actions against Nike Retail Services, Bloomingdales, Warby Parker and Walmart.
The four cases had been consolidated in the Business Litigation Session. In each case, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated Mass. G.L.c. 149, §19B(2)(b), which provides that all applications for employment must contain a notice stating: “It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.”
The defendant employers moved to dismiss on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing.
According to the defendants, the plaintiffs did not qualify as “persons aggrieved” within the meaning of the state’s lie detector statute because they were never subjected to lie detector tests when they applied for jobs, and because none of the defendants used lie detector tests in their hiring processes.
In granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss, the judge found that the fact that the lie detector statute authorizes statutory damages of at least $500 per violation did not alleviate the burden on the plaintiffs to show some form of harm to establish standing to sue.
Surveying case law interpreting the “person aggrieved” language used in other Massachusetts laws, the judge concluded that to qualify as a person aggrieved under the lie detector statute a plaintiff must “establish a nonspeculative harm that is more than minimal or slightly appreciable.”
He determined the plaintiffs failed to meet that standard.
In dismissing the cases, the judge explained that the only injury alleged was the applicants’ failure to receive the required notice on the application itself.
Because none of the employers used lie detector tests and no applicant was ever subjected to one, the court found that the omission had no real-world impact on the applicants’ job prospects, decision-making, or lives.
While the missing disclosure technically violated the statute, the court concluded that the harm was minimal and purely technical, and therefore insufficient to confer standing under state law.
