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
Plaintiff’s one-year limitations period for bringing suit after the California Department of Fair Employment & Housing issued a right-to-sue letter should be equitably tolled for a year beyond the EEOC’s issuance of its own right-to-sue letter, because plaintiff reasonably relied on the DFEH letter’s incorrect statement that the limitations period would be tolled while EEOC investigated the claim. Read More
A district court scheduling order was not an appealable order since it did not finally decide the dispositive issue of whether to compel arbitration. Read More
In this wage and hour dispute, defendant was not entitled to a writ of mandate to overturn a district court scheduling order setting trial on the issue of whether plaintiff’s contracts were employment agreements in interstate commerce and thus exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, since defendant has an adequate remedy on appeal from any order denying its motion to… Read More
Triable fact issues remain as to whether government entity running fair and exhibition grounds fits within the Fair Labor Standards Act’s amusement and recreation establishment exception to overtime pay requirements. Read More
Plaintiff’s prima facie claim for disability discrimination against her labor union does not necessarily require a showing that the union breached its duty of fair representation. Read More
The federal National Labor Relations Act did not preempt plaintiff Walmart’s state law trespass claim, which sought redress for defendant union’s in-store “flash mob” protest strategy. Read More
Despite the fact that plaintiff employee had no actual disability, her employer had a statutory duty to accommodate what it perceived to be her disability; consequently, triable issues of fact exist on plaintiff’s claim that her employment was terminated for an impermissible reason. Read More
The Labor Department’s regulation reversing, without explanation, decades of treating service advisors as exempt salesmen under the Fair Labor Standards Act is not entitled to judicial deference. Read More
Whether commission-paid employees were required to perform tasks not directly involved in selling, in violation of California’s minimum wage laws, was a common question permitting class certification. Read More
Plaintiff who took a medical leave of absence from her full-time job and, upon her return, was offered only part-time work, could not show that the employer’s legitimate business reason for not offering full-time work was pretextual. Read More
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a worker’s regular rate of pay, used to compute overtime pay, includes any compensation paid even if it is not paid on an hourly basis; so payments to employees in lieu of medical insurance benefits should have been included in their regular rate of pay, for purposes of computing their overtime pay. Read More
