Mass. Gen. Laws » Part I Title XXI Chapter 151D
Massachusetts General Laws

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151D, § 11 (2026)

Additional penalties for failure to pay contributions or benefits; venue for complaints

✓ current as of July 2026
Find cases: SyfertCases citing this section MAmalegislature.gov (official) JustiaChapter on Justia CornellLII Search CasesGoogle Scholar

Section 11. In addition to any other penalty of punishment otherwise prescribed by law any person or employee, and the president, secretary, and treasurer, or officers exercising corresponding functions, of a corporation which is an employer, who is party to an agreement to pay or provide the contributions or benefits covered by this chapter or who is so required to pay these contributions or benefits under the terms of sections twenty-six and twenty-seven of chapter one hundred and forty-nine, and who refuses or fails or neglects to pay such contributions or payments within thirty days after such payments are required to be made shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars or by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than one year, or both.

A complaint under this section may be brought in the municipal court of the city of Boston, or in a district court within the territorial jurisdiction of which the employer has his principal place of business, or within which the contributions are to be paid, or, if said complaint is brought against an officer of a corporation, within which said officer lives.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 4 cases, 1981–2012 · leading case: Commonwealth v. Federico, 419 N.E.2d 1374 (Mass. 1981).
Sort: Relevance Newest Treatment
Commonwealth v. Federico, 419 N.E.2d 1374 (Mass. 1981). · cites it 14× “§§ 1001-1381 (1976), precludes criminal prosecution under G. L. c. 151D, § 11, as appearing in St. 1973, c.”
Commonwealth v. Morash, 522 N.E.2d 409 (Mass. 1988). · cites it 4× “Federico, supra, where we held that a criminal prosecution under G. L. c. 151D, § 11, penalizing, among other things, delinquent contributions to employee benefit plans, is preempted by ERISA.”
State v. Burten, 530 A.2d 363 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 1986). “2d at 1377 , held: The § 1144(b)(4) exception from preemption for “generally applicable” State criminal laws appears designed to prevent otherwise criminal activity from being immunized from prosecution simply because the activity “relates to” an employee benefit plan.”
Raso v. Fahey (In Re Fahey), 470 B.R. 649 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2012). “109A, § 6(b) and Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 151D, § 11. 33 . Opposition Memorandum, Docket No.”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.