Labor & Employment

Since an employer may not legally require an employee to be on-duty or on-call during a rest break, defendant could not require its security guards to keep their radios on during their rest breaks and respond to an emergency call if one occurred during the rest break.  Read More

The Legislature violated two employers’ right to equal protection by carving them out of an exemption it granted all other employers from retroactive liability for certain minimum wage violations; avoiding the United Farmworkers Union’s opposition to the legislation was not a rational basis for treating the two employers differently.  Read More

In this meal and rest break action against a guard service company, the trial court erred in decertifying the class for lack of common questions of fact, because the fact that some employees may have been given adequate off-duty meal breaks went only to damages and thus did not undermine the predominance of common issues.  Read More

Special conditions in the concrete industry justified various alternative meal break arrangements for concrete truck drivers, since concrete can harden during a meal break if a truck is left unattended.  Read More

Former city parks employee claimed he was fired for opposing discriminatory practices against disabled citizens who used the parks, but he could not state a cause of action based on the California Fair Housing & Employment Act since that statute does not protect employees against retaliation for opposing discriminatory practices against non-employee customers or clients. Read More

Triable issues of fact existed on plaintiff’s disability discrimination claim after she was fired for tardiness due to recurrent doctor appointments and medical problems which resulted from what turned out to be a benign tumor.  Read More

Despite denial of an attorney at initial investigation interview for excessive force complaint, police officer could not state a claim based on the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act since he retained his prior employment at his same salary and thus suffered no adverse employment action.  Read More

A plaintiff cannot state claims against a payroll processor for violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act or Labor Code sections requiring payment of minimum wages since the payroll processor is not actually the plaintiff's employer.  Read More

In employee’s lawsuit against union alleging breach of duty of fair representation, district court erroneously granted summary judgment in favor of union, when the evidence showed that the union failed to pursue Rollins' special rights under a seniority agreement and the evidence conflicted as to whether its stated reasons for doing so were actually reasonable.  Read More

The Department of Industrial Relations may penalize any employer who lacks worker’s compensation coverage for more than one week during the calendar year preceding the determination, and Labor Code 3722(b)’s reference to “calendar year” is interpreted to mean the 12 months immediately preceding the determination of lack of insurance rather than a Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 calendar year.  Read More

Communications between the Agricultural Labor Relations Board and its general counsel are subject to the attorney-client privilege insofar as the communications pertain to the decision whether the Board should file a complaint seeking injunctive relief in court.  Read More

Counsel for the plaintiff class in one wage-and-hour suit against Apple is too conflicted to act as counsel for the plaintiff class in a separate wage-and-hour case against the same company, since members of the first class would likely be defense witnesses in the second class.  Read More

Labor Code 226 does not require an employer to list on an employee's ordinary pay stubs the amount of vacation benefits earned but not paid during the pay period.  Read More

The National Labor Relations Act did not preempt a manager’s state law wrongful termination claims, as his termination did not arguably interfere with employees’ right to organize—they had already voted to join a union when the manager was fired for goading them into unionizing.  Read More

An arbitration clause in an employee handbook given new employees was unenforceable because the employee was not required to (and didn’t) agree to its terms, but only acknowledged that she had received the handbook.  Read More

Los Angeles ordinance setting $15.75 minimum hourly wage is not pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act.  Read More

Labor Code 202 and 203 require employers to promptly pay final wages to employees who quit to retire as well as those who quit for other reasons.  Read More

Claims under an Oregon statute for wages "due and owing" were preempted by the National Labor Relations Act, because the court would have to interpret the collective bargaining agreement in order to decide what wages were due and owing under its terms; nonetheless, a claim that the employer failed to promptly pay health insurance premiums from sums it deducted from… Read More

Section 1983 claims are, in some instances, precluded by federal statutes containing comprehensive remedial schemes of their own; but if the statutory rights and protections diverge significantly from the constitutional ones, there is no preclusion—as here, where an ADEA action for retaliation diverges significantly enough from a 1983 action based on deprivation of First Amendment rights (due to retaliation for… Read More

A plaintiff’s discrimination and retaliation suit against the University where she was a medical resident in anesthesiology did not arise from the University's protected activity in conducting proceedings leading to her discipline and ultimate termination, but rather from the University's allegedly wrongful (and unprotected) antecedent conduct in discriminating and retaliating against plaintiff, which in turn led to the protected disciplinary… Read More