California employment case index

A resident manager whose apartment came with the job refused to leave after she was terminated. The Appellate Division affirms an unlawful detainer judgment: housing provided as part of employment compensation is not a protected tenancy, the former manager became a tenant at sufferance or licensee outside the Tenant Protection Act, and her retaliatory-eviction defense failed for lack of evidence.

An employer must prove a reasonable, good-faith attempt to comply before escaping liquidated damages under Labor Code section 1194.2.

The California Supreme Court holds that CCP §1281.98's arbitration-fee-payment forfeiture rule is not preempted by the FAA — but, rejecting the rigid automatic-forfeiture reading, only where a late payment is willful, grossly negligent, or fraudulent rather than a good-faith mistake or excusable neglect.

A solar-project electrician queued unpaid at a security gate while guards inspected vehicles, drove miles of access road under strict site rules, and ate lunch confined to a designated area under a CBA calling meal periods “unpaid.” Answering the Ninth Circuit, a unanimous Supreme Court held the exit procedure is compensable “hours worked”; the gate-to-lot drive is compensable only as “employer-mandated travel,” and only if the gate is the first location required for a reason beyond site access; and no collective bargaining agreement can waive the minimum wage for a meal period during which the employer’s confinement forecloses otherwise feasible personal activities.

Analysis · Key Case Cvejic v. Skyview Capital, LLC (2023) 92 Cal.App.5th 1073 Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Eight · Docket No. B318880 · Decided June 28, 2023 Verify before relying. A summary and analysis as of its publication date — not legal advice, and not a representation that the decision remains good […]

Troester v. Starbucks Corp. (2018) 5 Cal.5th 829 holds that California has not adopted the federal de minimis doctrine: an employer that requires small but regularly recurring off-the-clock work — here, several minutes of closing tasks each shift — must pay for that time and cannot invoke de minimis to avoid it.

Neither Labor Code section 1194 nor section 218.5 authorizes an award of attorney fees to a party that prevails on a section 226.7 claim; such claims are not actions for the nonpayment of minimum wages or overtime (§1194) and are not the kind of nonpayment-of-wages action that triggers §218.5 fee-shifting, so each…

California does not permit wage averaging: the minimum-wage standard applies to each hour worked, and an employer must pay at least the minimum wage for every compensable hour; it cannot use higher pay for some hours to offset unpaid or sub-minimum hours.