Labor & Employment

The employee is the prevailing party, entitled to a fee award on an employer’s appeal from a Labor Commissioner’s ruling unless the appeal reduces the employer’s liability to $0. Read More

California labor laws do not recognize the federal de minimis doctrine; hence, Starbucks's practice of requiring store managers to work without pay several minutes a day after clocking out was illegal. Read More

Taco Bell’s policy allowing employees to buy discounted meals to eat during their meal breaks—but only if they ate the discounted meal on the premises—did not violate California rule that employees be relieved of all work duties and employer control during meal breaks. Read More

A state law requiring public employees who are non-union members to pay agency fees to the union that is the certified bargaining agent for employees in their work unit violates the First Amendment by compelling the employees to fund speech with which they may not agree. Read More

An employer may use a time clock that averages to the nearest quarter hour, so long as the employer can show that the rounding policy, over time, results in overcompensation of workers as a whole (even if the employer cannot show that the policy does not undercompensate any particular worker). Read More

Plaintiff employee was not barred from testifying about her memory of the content of sexually suggestive emails defendant co-worker sent her since the emails themselves had been lost. Read More

Administrative law judge’s decision finding cause for community college employee’s termination collaterally estopped employee’s later suit for discrimination, insofar as that suit sought to challenge ALJ’s finding that employer had a non-discriminatory reason for the termination. Read More

An addendum to a standard form workers compensation release did not release the employee’s sexual orientation employment discrimination claims as it did not clearly reference claims outside the workers' compensation system. Read More

Defendant’s payroll practices were in compliance with Labor Code 226(a) with respect to both disclosures of overtime bonus-related pay and mailing of wage statements to terminated employees. Read More

Employer suspected it was underpaying employees due to the enactment of a living wage ordinance enacted by Los Angeles, but it made no reasonable effort to acquire a copy of the ordinance or determine its requirements, and this half-hearted effort amounted to an act of willfulness for purposes of determining liability for waiting time penalties. Read More

An employee who has been affected by one Labor Code violation by the employer may bring a Private Attorney General Act suit against the employer for civil penalties based on all Labor Code violations committed by the employer.  Read More

Summary judgment was improperly granted on plaintiff’s FEHA pregnancy discrimination claim; she did not need to show she had submitted a job application; it was enough to show that the employer’s discriminatory conduct deterred her from applying. Read More

To collect damages from an employer for failure to provide proper wage statements, an employee must show actual injury, which is not possible if omitted information is easily calculated from information the wage statement properly discloses; but no actual injury need be shown for the employee to recover civil penalties from the employer in a Private Attorney General Act suit… Read More

A statement by the UFW that "we're through with you" was not a clear and unequivocal disclaimer of the union's interest in representing the bargaining unit. Read More

A two-thirds majority of workers may approve an alternative workweek schedule (AWS) of fewer days but longer hours without overtime pay, but in a subsequent court challenge, the burden is on the employer to show that proper procedures (such as a secret ballot) were followed when the AWS was approved. Read More

A government employee must exhaust administrative remedies before suing in court for whistleblower retaliation, but the employee need not seek judicial review of the administrative decision which is not binding in the court suit. Read More

A worker is treated as an independent contractor only if he or she meets a three-prong test involving control and direction of the hirer, the usual course of the hiring entity's business, and the worker's customary occupation. Read More

The 90-day statute of limitations for Title VII claims begins to run from the date plaintiff receives his or her right-to-sue letter from the EEOC. Read More

An employee of a gas station operated by an independent franchisee could not bring wage and hour action against the franchisor because the franchisor was not his employer under the relevant statutory test. Read More

A trial court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing wage & hour putative class action for failure to bring to trial within five years since pending arbitration did not prevent plaintiff from moving forward with the non-arbitrable pieces of litigation. Read More