United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 21-1352 JAMPA GONPO, on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. SONAM'S STONEWALLS & ART, LLC, d/b/a Sonam's Stonewalls and Art; SONAM RINCHEN LAMA, Defendants, Appellants. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS [Hon. Mark G. Mastroianni, U.S. District Judge] Before Thompson, Howard, and Gelpí, Circuit Judges. Thomas T. Merrigan, with whom Sweeney Merrigan Law, LLP was on brief, for appellants. Tiffany Troy, with whom Aaron B. Schweitzer and Troy Law, PLLC were on brief, for appellee. July 15, 2022 THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. A Springfield, Massachusetts jury found defendants Sonam Rinchen Lama and Sonam's Stonewalls & Art, LLC (collectively, "Lama"1) liable for failing to pay all the wages owed to their former employee, plaintiff Jampa Gonpo. Appealing from the hefty tab the jury left him, Lama trains his focus on two of the district court's evidentiary decisions -- one to exclude, and one to admit evidence -- and asks us to remand for a new trial. Discerning no reversible error, we affirm. BACKGROUND Gonpo originally hails from Nepal, where he first met Lama (a Tibetan immigrant) in 2004.2 While in Nepal on a trip, Lama befriended Gonpo, and three years later, there was an arrangement between the two for Gonpo to move to the United States. There was some dispute at trial over who asked whom to come over, but suffice it to say that Lama fronted the cash for the $20,000 bill of getting Gonpo here. Soon after Gonpo's arrival stateside, he began working for Lama in Lama's stonemasonry business in 2008. The stonemasonry business is seasonal. Workers generally don't start up until sometime around March or April 1Throughout the trial, the parties did not make clear distinctions in testimony, questioning, or argument between Mr. Lama and the limited liability company, and they continue the same tack on appeal. So we will not distinguish between the two parties either. The parties interchange the use of "Tibet" and "Nepal," so 2 we do our best to distinguish between the two. - 2 - because, any earlier, the ground is still frozen from the New England winter, and things usually end sometime in November or December, when the first snowfall comes. Hotly in dispute in this case was how many hours per week workers toiled during those in-season months. On the one hand, Gonpo testified that he and his associates worked six days per week (with only Sundays off), with weekly hours totaling about 56 or 57 hours. He lined up testimony from one of his former colleagues that his hours were similar. Lama, though, claims that none of his employees worked more than 40 hours in a week, and he lined up testimony from three of his other employees to that effect. Yet Lama has no timekeeping records to back up that assertion, instead casting blame on his bookkeeper, on whom he relied to handle that part of the business, but who …
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