Labor & Employment

Smith was employed by Jiffy Lube.  Fifty Jiffy Lube employees including Smith and his supervisors attended a meeting at which Pumerol, a BP representative, provided information on the company's new product and how it should be used in Jiffy Lube's work.  During the meeting Pumerol made three derogatory comments about Smith, an African-American, including a reference to his "Banana Hands/" … Read More

This decision affirms an order denying class certification on a claim that See's did not give its employees a second meal break when they worked for 10 hours or more a day.  See's had a written policy requiring a second meal break in those circumstances, but plaintiff claimed that See's routinely failed to follow that policy in practice.  Time records… Read More

For an association to have standing to sue for its members, it must show that (a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization's purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit. … Read More

Disagreeing with Villacorta v. Cemex Cement, Inc. (2013) 221 Cal.App.4th 1425, this decision holds that income a wrongfully terminated employee earns from another job after termination must be subtracted from her past economic damages for the wrongful termination whether or not the subsequent employment was not comparable or substantially similar to the job that was wrongfully terminated.  The comparable or… Read More

Following Contreras v. Superior Court (2021)  61 Cal.App.5th 461 and Provost v. YourMechanic, Inc. (2020) 55 Cal.App.5th 982, this decision holds that even when the arbitration agreement delegates arbitrability issues to the arbitrator, a plaintiff bringing a PAGA claim cannot be compelled to arbitrate the threshold issue of whether she is an "employee" with standing to bring a PAGA claim… Read More

The gist of a teacher's FEHA claim for retaliation for filing a complaint with the DFEH was the defendant's adverse employment action, not the protected activity of the investigation it conducted leading up to that action or its later protected action of defending the adverse employment action before a review commission.  Accordingly, the case did not arise from conduct protected… Read More

AB-5 which codifies the ABC test of employee status is a generally applicable labor law that affects a motor carrier’s relationship with its workforce but does not bind, compel, or otherwise freeze into place the prices, routes, or services of motor carriers, we conclude that it is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (49 USC… Read More

The IWC's wage orders setting minimum wages and the method of calculating hours of work for purposes of paying minimum wages do not apply to the University of California which is not a political subdivision of the state and does not otherwise fall within the definition of a public employer under Wage Order No. 4.  Instead, the University is a… Read More

Using the website of the administrator hired by Northrup Grumman to manage its pension plan, plaintiffs submitted requests for the administrator to tell them the monthly pension benefit they would receive if they retired on a certain date.  The administrator miscalculated the benefit because it used the requesters' wages during their second period of employment by Northrup Grumman rather than… Read More

Older 9th Circuit decisions hold that while statutory employment discrimination claims under Title VII and similar laws are arbitrable, there must be a showing that the employee knowingly waived his right to a jury trial of such claims.  In this decision, the court holds that even if the "knowing waiver" standard is still good law, it was satisfied in this… Read More