Labor & Employment

Arbitration clause in employee’s contract with staffing agency could be enforced by the employer to whom the staffing agency assigned him, because plaintiff’s claims arose out of his employment contract and were intimately intertwined with it, thus estopping him from asserting the employer was not a party to the agreement.  Read More

The Labor Code requirement that an employer give an employee a day of rest after six days of work applies on a calendar week basis, not a rolling basis, and applies during any week in which the employee works more than six hours in any one day.  Read More

In defending a claim that employees’ pay disparity violates the Equal Pay Act, an employer may justify the disparities by showing that it results from differences between the pay the compared employees earned in prior jobs, so long as the reliance on prior wages effectuates some business policy of the employer and the employer uses evidence of prior wages reasonably. Read More

Plaintiff-employee who quit her job during a psychotic episode induced by prescription drugs could not state a claim for disability discrimination when her former employer denied her later request for reinstatement; the former employer owed no duty to rehire her once the former employment relationship ceased.  Read More

Employer was not entitled to summary judgment on discrimination claim based on the Immigration Control and Reform Act, since that act requires proof of immigration status only for new hires, not employees reinstated after a disciplinary suspension nor employees hired before 1986.  Read More

The trial court’s finding that plaintiffs were exempt administrative employees, not entitled to overtime pay, was supported by substantial, properly admitted evidence showing plaintiffs spent more than 50% of their work time on administrative tasks.  Read More

Employer improperly calculated overtime pay in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act when it paid employees for overtime at a rate less than 150% of their usual non-overtime pay.  Read More

Health care workers may waive their otherwise mandatory second meal break during shifts of over eight hours. Read More

An arbitration clause in a high executive’s employment contract was enforceable after severance of its single unconscionable provision exempting from arbitration any claim for breach by the employee of the employer’s confidentiality agreement.  Read More

Police officer recruits who sustained temporary injuries while training at the Police Academy were unable to prove claims for disability discrimination, but they nevertheless were entitled to judgment on their claim that the City had failed to accommodate their disabilities when it eliminated a program under which injured recruits were assigned to light administrative duties while they recovered.  Read More

A charter school is not exempt from liability for penalties for failing to pay workers the amounts due when their employment is terminated.  Read More

In order to reach a jury, plaintiff did not need to introduce evidence that unwelcome sexual advances from plaintiff’s supervisor are both severe and pervasive; since the statute is disjunctive, she only needed to proffer evidence of one of these aspects.  Read More

District court properly denied defendant employer’s motion to compel arbitration of plaintiff workers’ wage and hour claims, since collective bargaining agreement’s arbitration clause covered only contract-related claims, not statutory claims.  Read More

It was an abuse of discretion to deny defendant employer’s motion to compel arbitration due to the low level of procedural unconscionability and the absence of substantive unconscionability.  Read More

Employee raised genuine issue of material fact sufficient to survive summary judgment on gender discrimination claim, after she introduced evidence of disparate treatment of male colleagues and of her immediate supervisor's discriminatory remarks about having a woman in plaintiff's position.  Read More

Employee raised genuine issues of material fact as to racial discrimination and retaliation after he introduced evidence that his supervisor demeaned him with belittling, racist remarks and that he was fired after he complained about it.  Read More

Triable issues of fact existed as to whether defendant employer had terminated plaintiff’s employment in retaliation for exercising her rights under California’s Family and Medical Leave Act.  Read More

A car dealer’s service advisors who do not sell or service cars do not fall within the exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime pay requirements for a "salesman, partsman or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles."  Read More

Employer did not violate California’s minimum wage laws by its policies of rounding employees’ work clock times to the nearest tenth of an hour or by allowing employees up to ten minutes uncompensated time before and after shifts in which to clock in or out.  Read More

The trial court correctly denied an employer's motion to compel arbitration of an employee's complaint under the Private Attorney General Act, since an individual employee's PAGA claim is not severable from the claim on behalf of the general public.  Read More