David Walton, et al.v Comfort Systesm, USA, Inc.

Syracuse, New York, employment law lawyers represented the Plaintiff on a breach of contract theory.



Section 220 states that no worker doing

certain types of work on public works projects shall be paid less than the

prevailing rate of wages and requires contracts for employment on such projects

to include a provision agreeing to pay prevailing rates. New York courts have

held that a worker can sue to recover prevailing wages on a third-party beneficiary

breach of contract theory.



Plaintiffs sued their former employer, Defendant-Appellee Comfort Systems, seeking to recover, along4

with other relief, prevailing wages under § 220 for the fire alarm testing and

inspection work they performed on public works.



The United States District Court for the Northern District of New York

(Kahn, J.) granted Comfort Systems' motion for partial summary judgment on all

prevailing wage-related causes of action for three reasons: (1) the contracts did not

affirmatively state that Comfort Systems would pay prevailing wages; (2) the

contracts shortened the applicable statute of limitations to one year; and (3) even

if the above were not true, fire alarm testing and inspection work is not the type of

work subject to prevailing wages under § 220. See generally Maddison v. Comfort

Systems USA (Syracuse), Inc., 5:17-cv-0359, 2020 WL 950288 (N.D.N.Y. Feb. 27,

2020).

Certified question to the Court of Appeals of the State of New

York.