If an employer overpays salary, how long do they have to take action to be rectify the mistake? The BBC reported that army helicopter pilots were over paid, and that the Ministry of Defence is aiming to recoup the over payments. What surprised me is the length of time between over payment and action from the Ministry of Defence: A freedom of information request showed £829,000 in overpayments had been made to 210 pilots between 2007 and 2013, because of the administrative mistake. In cases where over payment has happened, how long does an employer have to recoup the payment before that money becomes the employees? Source: Army helicopter pilots quit in overpayment row
Normally the statute of limitations is five or six years (I think it's different between Scotland and the rest of the UK). The reason for the limitation is that if your employer asks for money back, you obviously should be able to defend yourself, for example by proving that you never received that money. After five or six years it is assumed that you wouldn't be able to provide any such evidence, so nobody can ask for the money back anymore. That's not specific to overpaid wages but quite general. In addition there is the question whether the pilots should have known they were overpaid. For example, I'm quite happy with my salary, but if it was less, I would look for and find a different job that pays better. If the company claimed in five years time that I had been overpaid all the time, then I would say that if they had given me the "correct" lower payment, I would have found a better job elsewhere, so asking me to repay the money seems quite unfair. (Why do you need to defend yourself? Maybe your salary was £3,000 per month. Someone in the right position records that they are paying you £4,000 but puts £3,000 into your account and £1,000 into their own. Then that person has an accident and their replacement finds that you were overpaid according to their records.)
In practice this is rarely done in the US. There have been cases of employment contracts with automatic increases tied to the CPI (Consumer Price Index) or some other measure of inflation -- I believe at one time a number of union contracts specified this. Employer and employee could certainly agree on any such formula. But in the absence of any explicit provision for such a link, and an agreed formula for the resulting salary, I think a stated salary would be interpreted as a fixed sum, not subject to change until an explicit change is made. Fixed wages are the almost invariable custom, and in the absence of any explicit provision for an automatic inflationary change, I think a court would assume a fixed amount, if it came to a court case.
Is It Too Late To Collect The Bill? Probably not. There is a statute of limitations for collecting unpaid medical bills that varies in length in different jurisdictions, and the age of the bill in the question is approximate, so it is hard to know for sure if this one is too old. The relevant statutes of limitations in most U.S. states would be at least three years and in some it could be as much as ten or twelve years. If I recall correctly, in Canada, the relevant statute of limitations would be determined at the provincial level. Given that this was &quot;a couple of years ago&quot; realistically, it is probably not barred by the statute of limitations yet. Are Interest Charges Allowed. Generally yes. Most jurisdictions allow for pre-judgment interest at a statutory rate from the date due in the absence of a contrary agreement and if the provider's paperwork with you provided for another interest rate, that would apply instead. So charging interest is allowed. The existence of a dispute wouldn't change this result, although it would, of course, mean that if some portion of the bill was disallowed in a later lawsuit that interest would be owed only on the portion that the court found was actually owed. The Provider's Remedies A Lawsuit If these bills are not paid, they can sue. Statute of limitations, or errors in billing, or failure to seek reimbursement from the police as arranged with them, would all be legitimate defenses in lawsuit brought by the provider. Given the modest amount allegedly owed and the existence of defenses, this might not be a very attractive one for the provider to choose to bring suit to collect. Credit Reporting On the other hand, in lieu of suing, the provider could simply report it as a bad debt with a credit reporting agency through their collections company. This would look bad on your credit (for up to seven years in the U.S., although you could insist on filing a rebuttal statement as part of your credit report, I don't know how disputes about credit reporting work in Canada). Paying them would almost admit that there was a late payment for credit reporting purposes, but also might prevent the incident from entering the credit reporting system at all.
Not returning a payment made in error may amount to theft. s.5(4) of the Theft Act 1968 covers this scenario: Where a person gets property by another’s mistake, and is under an obligation to make restoration (in whole or in part) of the property or its proceeds or of the value thereof, then to the extent of that obligation the property or proceeds shall be regarded (as against him) as belonging to the person entitled to restoration, and an intention not to make restoration shall be regarded accordingly as an intention to deprive that person of the property or proceeds. And the leading case law is A-G Ref (No 1 of 1983) [1985] QB 182 where, in similar circumstances: The defendant, a police woman, received an overpayment in her wages by mistake. She had noticed that she had received more than she was entitled to but did not say anything to her employer. She did not withdraw any of the money from her bank account. The trial judge directed the jury to acquit. The Attorney General referred a question to the Court of Appeal. Held [on appeal]: It was possible for a theft conviction to arise where the defendant had not withdrawn the money. There was a legal obligation to return the money received by mistake.
We don't want this issue to adversely affect our credit and got legal consulting which suggested we should pay the debt collector to protect our credit score, and then sue the landlord for the money back in small claims court. I'm a little worried about this strategy since it requires to hand away the money first, and am trying to get second opinions. The debt collector is probably either the owner of the claim against you, if it is an assignee of the claim, or an agent of the landlord for purposes of collection. Thus, payment to the debt collector is equivalent to payment of the landlord. The law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction regarding whether payment constitutes of waiver of a right to sue over the debt. Sometimes it is necessary to designate the payment "under protests" or "reserving all rights", but that is not a uniform rule of law that applies in all jurisdictions, and I do not have the time and familiarity with that state's law to research Massachusetts case law on that point accurately.
Contracts contain an implicit term that obligations will be carried out in a reasonable time While the situation is unusual and we obviously don't have the specific terms of the agreement, it would appear that the vendor agreed to contribute to half the cost of the roof repair and your sister was obliged to contribute the other half and arrange for the roof to be repaired. Implicit in this is that she would do this within a reasonable time. Your sister does not have the right to keep the money in limbo indefinitely. It's open to argument whether a year is a reasonable time or not. Similarly, if your sister is in breach of the agreement, the vendor would probably only be entitled to damages for what they have lost; they would not normally be entitled to terminate the contract. Their damages might be assessed as the difference between what their share costs now compared to what it would have cost a year ago - this may be nothing or a lot depending on how prices have changed - and interest lost on the balance that should have been returned to them.
if a manager emailed an prospective employee a contract containing the pay rate of $20/hr, if the prospective employee crossed out $20/hr and replaced it with $25/hr, then went to work and gave the manager the contract which he failed to carefully read, continued working for a few months, would the employee be entitled to $20/hr? A party ought to timely alert or notify the other counterparty about any disagreements or proposed changes. This is especially recommendable when evidence suggests that the counterparty's expectation that the party only would sign the contract was reasonable. In the example you outline, the employee's unilateral alteration of the compensation/rate in the contract seems unlikely to favor the employee's position. That is because typically employer and employee negotiate compensation prior to formalizing their agreement. In that case, the employee would need stronger evidence with which to overcome the employer's credible argument that he did not knowingly accept the altered rate.
I have the same line in a contract that was just sent to me. So I did some quick research into this. However, I AM NEW TO THE SYSTEM AND DO NOT KNOW IT WELL!!, so please do not act on this information without seeking further advice from the relevant professionals. From what I can gather, the "Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG)" is the law that governs working hours in Germany. Here is a link: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/arbzg/gesamt.pdf I used Google Translate to translate this information and found that in §3 it states that "The default daily working time must not exceed eight hours. It can only be extended up to ten hours if within six calendar months or 24 weeks an average of eight hours working day is not exceeded." This would lead me to believe that even if overtime is not paid as extra on top of your salary, they must give you the time off at another time to keep the average working day to 8 hours. **However, as the working week is Monday - Sat, the average working hours per week may be calculated as 48 hours per week, and not 40! Once again, I am not fully sure of my information, so use at your own risk!!