8. Commitments and contingencies

The Company is involved in various legal proceedings, including the matters described below, in the ordinary course of its business.

In March 2009, a state Medicaid agency asserted a claim against MAXIMUS, related to a discontinued business line, in the amount of $2.3 million in connection with a contract MAXIMUS had through February 1, 2009 to provide Medicaid administrative claiming services to school districts in the state. MAXIMUS entered into separate agreements with the school districts under which MAXIMUS helped the districts prepare and submit claims to the state Medicaid agency which, in turn, submitted claims for reimbursement to the United States Federal Government. No legal action has been initiated. The state has asserted that its agreement with MAXIMUS requires the Company to reimburse the state for the amounts owed to the Federal Government. However, the Company’s agreements with the school districts require them to reimburse MAXIMUS for such payments and therefore MAXIMUS believes the school districts are responsible for any amounts disallowed by the state Medicaid agency or the Federal Government. The Company believes its exposure in this matter is limited to its fees associated with this work and that the school districts will be responsible for the remainder. MAXIMUS has exited the federal health care claiming business and no longer provides the services at issue in this matter.

In 2008, MAXIMUS sold the SchoolMAX student information system business line as part of the divestiture of the MAXIMUS Education Systems division. In 2012, a school district (“District”) which was a SchoolMAX client filed a formal arbitration notice alleging that MAXIMUS and the buyer failed to (i) use best practices in developing the software and (ii) deliver and test product releases as required by the contract. The District contended that those failures resulted in damages of at least $10 million. In December 2012, the arbitration panel denied the District’s claims in their entirety. Costs related to the arbitration proceeding have been included within discontinued operations. The District subsequently filed a motion to vacate the decision of the arbitration panel which was denied by the court in July 2013. The District has appealed that ruling. Separately, in late 2012, the District claimed that MAXIMUS had defrauded the District in 2007 or 2008 by misrepresenting its intentions regarding the sale of the Education Systems division. That allegation was not part of the arbitration, and no formal claim or lawsuit has been filed. The company believes it has a number of defenses to that allegation and would contest it vigorously if it were formally asserted.

In January 2014, MAXIMUS was named a defendant in Norton et al. v. MAXIMUS in the U.S. District Court for Idaho. The plaintiffs in this purported class action are current and former trainers and supervisors at the MAXIMUS federal health care projects in Boise, Idaho and Brownsville, Texas. They allege the Company willfully misclassified them as exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act and failed to pay them overtime, and they seek to establish a nationwide class covering the company’s federal health care operations. The plaintiffs allege compensatory and punitive damages of at least $5.0 million. MAXIMUS has since reclassified the trainers as non-exempt employees and is seeking an expedited resolution of their wage claims. MAXIMUS denies liability as to the supervisors and will contest the matter vigorously. As of June 30, 2014, the Company has reserved $0.6 million to cover the estimated legal costs of defending this lawsuit, in addition to estimated liabilities to employees.