Labor & Employment

An employer cannot require a disabled job applicant to submit to additional medical tests at his own expense as a condition of employment. Read More

An appeal of a federal district court’s remand order does not stay proceedings in the state court and so does not toll the 5-year deadline for commencing trial. Read More

Class action settlement and judgment in a case brought under the California Labor Code had res judicata effect on a subsequent class action involving same employees and same employer based on the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Read More

To appeal from the Labor Commissioner's ruling on an employee’s wage claim, the employer must post a bond in the amount of the award; failure to do so results in dismissal of the appeal unless the employer is indigent. Read More

An employer must give an employee a meal break if the shift is five hours or longer, but if the total work period is not more than six hours, the employer and employee may waive this requirement by mutual agreement, such as through a clear and unmistakable collective bargaining agreement. Read More

An employee cannot state a claim against his employer based on a theory of “receiving stolen property” on the basis that the employer “received” the employee's labor without paying the agreed price for it.  Read More

A Washington state law requiring an employer to allow an employee to reschedule accrued vacation time to care for the medical needs of close relatives is not pre-empted by the federal Railway Labor Act, since that preemption extends only far enough to protect the role of labor arbitration in resolving disputes over collective bargaining agreements—which was not at issue in… Read More

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