Summary judgment was improper where questions of fact remained as to whether the plaintiff was a domestic work employee of defendant caregiver placement agency for purposes of the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, Lab. Code 1450 et seq., rather than an independent contractor as the defendant claimed. Read More
After employee provided uncontradicted evidence that he worked overtime hours he could not be denied compensation merely because his employer failed to keep accurate time records of the employee's hours of work; rather, at that point the employee's memory of time spent on special projects sufficed, and the burden shifted to the employer to disprove the claimed hours. Read More
Union members need not arbitrate state statutory claims unless their collective bargaining agreement clearly and unmistakably consigns the claims to arbitration, expressly mentioning the statute or the rights it confers. Read More
Despite good faith efforts to comply, defendant employer’s time records and payroll records showed that 75% of the workers who worked between five and five and a quarter hours were not given meal breaks or missed meal break pay, so trial court correctly entered judgment finding employer liable for penalties. Read More
Although she taught a standard half-hour religion course each day, a fifth-grade teacher at a Catholic school was not a “minister” and so could sue the school for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by firing her after it learned she was diagnosed with cancer. Read More
Trial court properly declined to certify a class in putative wage and hour class action brought by property inspectors because even though common questions predominated, the plaintiffs' proposed trial plan of proving liability by means of an expert's testimony based on a double-blind survey he conducted of a random sample of class members was unmanageable, inadequate, and unfair. Read More
A court's interest in regulating its workforce to ensure that the judicial process appears impartial to all appearing before it justifies the court's rule banning employees from advocacy activity, such as wearing clothing or adornments with writings or images advocating a cause. Read More
An employer may legally round the actual clock in and out times for workers to the nearest 10th or 4th of an hour so long as the rounding doesn't overall disadvantage workers, and this is true for meal and rest breaks as well as the work day as a whole. Read More
The Industrial Welfare Commission may exempt health care workers from the Labor Code provision allowing a waiver of second meal breaks only for shifts of 12 hours or less. Read More
Employees of a private firm who, under the firm's contract with a county sanitary district, sorted recyclables from a conveyor belt at a district-owned facility, were engaged in public work to which the prevailing wage law applied. Read More
Putative class representatives were not entitled to intervene in a parallel class action to object to settlement as they could preserve their rights by opting out or by objecting to the settlement and moving to vacate judgment approving the settlement. Read More
Since an employer must pay workers for time spent on employer-provided transportation only when the employer requires the workers to use that transportation, defendant was not required to pay its technicians for time they spent driving from home to their first appointment of the day using company vehicles, because employees could return the company vehicles at the end of each… Read More
The trial court did not abuse its discretion in awarding fees to a prevailing plaintiff in an individual FLSA retaliation claim, properly apportioning total fees among several plaintiffs, and attributing to this prevailing plaintiff only those fees reasonably incurred in prosecuting her individual claims. Read More
The arbitration clause in a law firm’s partnership agreement was unconscionable and unenforceable because it required the lawyer/partner to pay half the arbitration costs and her own attorney fees, because it restricted the arbitrators’ ability to “override” or “substitute [their] judgment” for that of the law firm’s management, and it required confidentiality about all arbitrations. Read More
Defendant’s one-year non-compete clause was illegal and unenforceable under Business & Professions Code 16600 since it sought to bar former employees from soliciting the employment of any other current employees. Read More
A PAGA pre-suit notice of a Labor Code violation need not meet pleading standards or include evidence, but it must include sufficient detail to give the employer adequate notice of the nature of the violation. Read More
The 30-day deadline for an employer to petition for administrative mandamus runs from entry of the OSHA Appeals Board’s order denying reconsideration, not from the employer’s receipt of the order. Read More
For purposes of Industrial Welfare Commission wage orders, drivers like plaintiff who rented taxicab permits from the defendant are considered employees, not independent contractors, because they are not engaged in employment independent of the defendant; rather, they cannot switch companies without obtaining a new driver’s license from the city due to municipal ordinances. Read More
Defendant’s method of compensating its technicians—by giving each technician a base salary rate that was above the minimum wage but allowed the technician to increase his hourly rate by performing more production work that customers paid for during the workweek—did not violate California’s wage and hour laws, since each technician received an above-minimum wage rate for each hour worked. Read More
Defendant’s method of compensating its technicians—by giving each technician a base salary rate that was above the minimum wage but allowed the technician to increase his hourly rate by performing more production work that customers paid for during the workweek—did not violate California’s wage and hour laws, since each technician received an above-minimum wage rate for each hour worked. Read More
