Seyfarth was hired to investigate a professor's claim that she was discriminated against by Cal. State University Fullerton. It performed the investigation and submitted a report to the university administration concluding there was no merit to the professor's claims. After unsuccessfully suing a host of other defendants, the professor sued Seyfarth, claiming the report and investigation were biased, etc. Seyfarth… Read More
This en banc opinion reverses a summary judgment the district court had granted the University of Arizona in a Title IX sex harassment claim based on a sexual assault by a male student on a football scholarship against a woman student in off-campus housing. To obtain damages under Title IX for student-on-student harassment, a plaintiff must show (1) that the… Read More
When COVID shutdown its hotels, Hyatt temporarily furloughed many of its employees. This decision holds that Hyatt violated Lab. Code 201 and 227.3 by failing to pay the furloughed workers their accrued but unpaid vacation pay at the time they were furloughed. Under California law, a temporary layoff, with no specified return date within the normal pay period, is treated… Read More
Plaintiff was employed by defendant. While on a lunch break, he was hit by a pickup truck as he crossed a street near the store where he worked. He returned to work where he was given some minor first aid and then driven home, where it died. This decision holds that the Worker's Compensation Act provides plaintiff's sole remedy against… Read More
Following both Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (2022) 142 S.Ct. 1906 and Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 1104, this decision holds that the plaintiff must arbitrate PAGA claims that arise from Labor Code violations that affected him, but may pursue in court PAGA claims that arise from Labor Code violations affecting only other employees, not himself. Read More
Labor Code section 2802 requiring employers to reimburse employees for work-related expenses does not apply to government agency employers. The Labor Code imposed duty conflicts with the sovereign discretion that the Board of Trustees is granted under the Education Code to set its own equipment reimbursement policies. Read More
A prior PAGA suit against the same employer did not have claim preclusive effect as to all potential PAGA suits against the employer, nor could the release in the judicially approved agreement settling the prior suit enforceably release all potential PAGA claims against the employer. Instead, the prior plaintiff's authority to represent the state in suing under PAGA was governed… Read More
Gov. Code 12926(d) states that, for purposes of the FEHA, the term “ ‘[e]mployer’ includes any person regularly employing five or more persons, or any person acting as an agent of an employer, directly or indirectly . . . .” This decision holds that the quoted language allows the employer's agent to be held primarily liable for its own violation… Read More
Evid. Code 1106 prohibits admission of specific instances of plaintiff's sexual conduct to prove the plaintiff's consent or lack of injury from alleged sexual harassment, assault or battery. A "plaintiff's sexual conduct" includes involuntary as well as voluntary sexual conduct (such as a subsequent sexual assault by a different perpetrator). While evidence of sexual conduct otherwise excludable under 1106(a) may,… Read More
Under Wage Order No. 5, a hospital may obtain an affirmative defense to a claim for overtime pay by securing a 2/3ds affirmative vote of the workers in the unit to an alternative work schedule so long as the employer first makes full disclosure of the effects that the alternative work schedule will have and fulfills various other procedural requirements. … Read More
Following Rittmann v. Amazon.com, Inc. (9th Cir. 2020) 971 F.3d 904, this decision holds that drivers who drove goods from in-state warehouses to Domino's franchisees in California are workers engaged in interstate commerce within the meaning of the exception to the FAA's scope. These drivers handled the last stage of transportation of the goods from out-of-state sources to the California… Read More
This decision affirms a $7 million judgment, including $6 million in punitive damages, against an employer for firing plaintiff in violation of Lab. Code 1102.5(c) (which prohibits adverse employment action in retaliation for a refusal to work reasonably perceived to violate a local, state or federal rule or regulation) and 232.5 (which prohibits retaliation for reporting working coinditions). Plaintiff was… Read More
Anaheim's living wage ordinance applies to any business that receives a city subsidy--that is, a right to receive a rebate of any city tax. This decision holds that defendant is such a business because it had a right to receive a rebate of certain city taxes if they exceeded the amount needed to repay bonds issued to revitalize the Anaheim… Read More
Lab. Code 2802 requires an employer to reimburse employees for expenses they incurred in working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. It does not matter that the state's emergency stay-at-home caused the employees to work from home rather than in an office. Lab. Code 2802 contains no causation requirement or excuse. Rather the section requires an employer to reimburse employees… Read More
While the Rowland factors' foreseeability factors weigh in favor of imposing a duty of care on employers to take safety measures to prevent employees from contracting COVID-19 and transmitting the disease to family members and others, the public policy factors weigh against finding such a duty of care and they outweigh the foreseeability factors. Recognizing liability would create staggering risk… Read More
Defendant employer did not pay its arbitration fees within 30 days after their due date. Under CCP 1287.98, plaintiff therefore had and exercised the right to withdraw his claim from arbitration and pursue it in court. The arbitrator or arbitration administrator had no power to avoid the effect of defendant's nonpayment by extending the due date after defendant's default. Also,… Read More
Under Title VII (42 USC 2000e(j)), an employer must accommodate an employee's religious observance practice unless it is unable to do so without undue hardship in the conduct of the employer's business. Undue hardship requires substantially more than "more than de minimus cost." Instead, to establish "undue hardship," an employer must show is that the burden of granting an accommodation… Read More
While Lab. Code 1102.5 protects whistleblowers who are employees of a city or other governmental agency, the section does not apply to or protect elected governmental officials, like plaintiff who was a city treasurer. By contrast, Lab. Code 3351 defines "employee" for purposes of the Workers Compensation Act to include all elected, paid public officers. So the Workers Compensation Act… Read More
This decision holds that sexually graphic, violently misogynistic music played constantly throughout defendant's warehouse could create a hostile working environment constituting sex discrimination in employment. Music with sexually derogatory and violent content, played constantly and publicly throughout the workplace, can foster a hostile or abusive environment and thus constitute sex discrimination. Harassment, whether aural or visual, need not be directly… Read More
Under Lab. Code 2810.3, an outsourcing employer is liable for employees' wages for work done for another entity if the work is within the outsourcer's usual course of business. Here, the court holds that the section did not apply to defendants which were corporations that bought produce from farming corporations for which the workers were employed. While the defendants' produce… Read More
