Fact Check: Waiting-Time Penalty Calculator

§203 caps the penalty at 30 days verbatim: "the wages shall not continue for more than 30 days." Penalty is automatic on willful violation; no demand required. The automatic trigger value matches.

The good-faith defense to "willful" was confirmed by Naranjo (2024) — employer's reasonable, objectively-supported belief that no wages were owed can negate the willful element. The avoidance carve-out is in §203 verbatim: employees who "avoid payment or refuse tendered payment" forfeit penalty benefits during the avoidance period.

NRS 608.040 imposes up to 30 days of additional pay, parallel to CA §203 in structure. Nevada law also includes the avoidance-carve-out — employees who avoid payment or refuse tendered payment forfeit the penalty during that period.

§290.110(2) verbatim: penalty wages "shall not continue more than sixty days" — the 60-day cap (double CA's 30-day cap). The written-demand trigger is also in the statute: penalty requires "written request that such money or a valid check therefor be sent to him at some designated station or office" and accrues if wages don't arrive within 7 days of that request.

§181.13 imposes the discharge wage as "immediately due and payable upon demand of the employee"; default occurs 24 hours after the demand; penalty up to 15 days of average daily earnings. The on-demand-24h trigger value captures the 24-hour-after-demand clock; the 15-day cap matches the statute.

§31-72 prevailing-employee recovery is "twice the full amount of such wages, with costs and reasonable attorney's fees." The 2× multiplier is the post-2015 default; good-faith defense reduces recovery back to single wages (1×). strictLiability: false reflects the available good-faith defense (narrowly read).

§150 verbatim: "shall be awarded treble damages, as liquidated damages, for any lost wages and other benefits." Treble = 3× total. Reuter established strict liability — no good-faith defense, no pre-suit-payment cure. The strictLiability: true and goodFaithDefense: false values are correct.

ORS 652.150 verbatim: "wages or compensation of the employee shall continue from the due date thereof at the same hourly rate for eight hours per day until paid... in no case shall the penalty wages or compensation continue for more than 30 days." The 8-hour daily cap is statutory and unique to Oregon; the per-day-eight-hour-cap structure correctly encodes both the 8-hour ceiling and the 30-day cap.

19 unit tests in automated tests cover the per-state math, the cap edges (30/60/15-day), the zero-input case, and the MO-without-demand non-trigger case. All pass.

Last amended Jan 1, 2020 (Stats. 2019, Ch. 700, SB 286).

§203 includes the avoidance carve-out language verbatim. Methodology correctly attributes the same rule to Nevada NRS 608.040 (parallel structure).

The 2× default + good-faith defense reducing to 1× has been the rule since the 2015 amendment to §31-72.

The "strict liability" framing comes from Reuter v. City of Methuen's interpretation of §150 — the statute itself sets the treble-damages floor, Reuter confirms it applies even to pre-complaint voluntary payments.

The "states without a specific penalty statute default to next-payday + general civil action" framing is supported by the same evidence as the companion article's State-by-State table — Texas Labor Code §61.014 (6-day discharge / next-payday quit), NY Labor Law §191 (next-payday for the pay period), and the general FLSA §206 framework for states without specific timing statutes.

California Supreme Court docket S279397. The 2024 decision held: (1) missed-break premium pay is "wages" subject to §203 timely payment, and (2) the "willful" gate to §203 has a narrow good-faith defense — an employer's reasonable, objectively-supported belief that no wages were owed can negate the penalty (the underlying wages still owe). Cross-verified from the published final-paycheck-laws-by-state article fact-check.

Parallel cite: 184 N.E.3d 772 (Mass. 2022). Holding: treble damages mandatory under MGL c.149 §150 regardless of (a) length of delay, (b) employer's intent, or (c) whether the employer paid voluntarily before suit. Cross-verified from the published final-paycheck-laws-by-state article fact-check.

The holding (daily-wage × calendar-days, capped at 30, with nonworkdays counting) is confirmed via multiple Tier 2 case summaries that all converge on the same reporter citation and substantive ruling. The Justia primary-mirror URL is the canonical Tier 1 source typically referenced, but Justia returned 403 during this verification pass on direct fetch. The substantive holding is uncontested and consistent with the §203 calculation logic the calculator implements; the URL gap is a fetchability issue, not a holding-verification issue. Cross-verified from the published final-paycheck-laws-by-state article fact-check.

Parallel cites: 241 P.3d 870, 117 Cal.Rptr.3d 377. Holding: §203(b) prescribes a single 3-year SOL for all §203 actions. The 3-year window is the same SOL the article uses for its "look-back" framing in the remediation playbook. Cross-verified from the published final-paycheck-laws-by-state article fact-check.

Verified by automated tests test case "20 days late at $200/day = $4,000 penalty (article example)". The default matches the canonical example in the companion article's "5 most expensive mistakes #1" section.

Test case "caps penalty at 30 days" verifies the cap behavior. Same shape applies to NV (30-day cap), MN (15-day cap), MO (60-day cap), OR (30-day cap).

Test case "1 day late × $500 = $1,500 total / $1,000 penalty layer (article example)" verifies the math. Matches the article's "$500 paid 1 day late = $1,500" example.

The 18-month recency window (used by answer engines to filter cited sources) is well within bounds. The two most-recent legal events (Naranjo 2024, Reuter 2022) are both fresh; the Nunez ruling (Oct 2025) is referenced in the companion article but doesn't directly affect the calculator's data layer.