California employment case index

A PAGA plaintiff proved Labor Code violations but recovered about one percent of the $56 million maximum he calculated, and his attorney fees were cut by a 0.70 negative multiplier. The Fourth District affirms: section 2699(e)(2) mandates no method for reducing penalties — per-employee is fine — and the trial court adequately justified the fee multiplier, leaving the “heightened scrutiny” question for the Supreme Court.

After Turrieta v. Lyft disapproved Moniz II by name, the objector in the long-running Adecco PAGA settlement tried a new key for the same lock: she was asserting her own personal interests — a penalty share, fees, a service award — not the state’s. Division Four dismissed her appeals. Every interest she claimed arises from PAGA itself and is derivative of the state’s; relabeling it personal is a semantic exercise that would leave Turrieta’s holding with no effect. The first published application of Turrieta makes overlapping-settlement fights a before-judgment affair: object in the approving court, police preclusion scope under LaCour — but intervention, vacatur, and appeal are closed.

Two Highland Hospital workers sued the public hospital authority running Alameda County’s medical facilities for meal-and-rest violations, unpaid wages, and PAGA penalties. A unanimous Supreme Court ended the case at the definitions: Labor Code section 18’s “person” — the term that controls who is an “employer” under the wage order and who can be penalized under PAGA — affirmatively excludes public entities. Absent express words bringing the government in, break rules and PAGA penalties stop at the public-sector line. The court disapproved Sargent’s contrary rule for statutes carrying their own penalties, declined to decide whether Government Code section 818 independently bars such penalties, and reserved the effect of the 2024 PAGA reform.

Three Lyft drivers filed overlapping PAGA actions; when one settled, the other two moved to intervene, objected, and moved to vacate the judgment — invoking their status as deputized proxies of the state. A divided Supreme Court held a PAGA plaintiff’s deputization confers no such rights: the statute delegates the power to commence and prosecute one’s own action, and it entrusts settlement oversight to the LWDA and the approving court. Moniz v. Adecco is disapproved. What remains for rival plaintiffs is coordination, informal input to the approving court, and advocacy to the LWDA — plus the open questions the court expressly reserved, including the state’s own rights and personal-interest intervention.

In Naranjo II (2024) 15 Cal.5th 1056, the California Supreme Court holds that an employer’s objectively reasonable, good-faith belief that its wage statements complied with the law defeats both Labor Code § 226 penalties (no “knowing and intentional” violation) and § 203 waiting-time penalties (no “willful” failure) — harmonizing the two penalty statutes around a common good-faith defense.

Marshalls bought a sweeping PAGA release in a federal settlement whose plaintiff had noticed only one theory to the LWDA — off-the-clock time in end-of-shift bag checks. When Robert LaCour later sued over expense reimbursement and other never-noticed violations, the trial court struck his claims as precluded. Division Four reversed: a PAGA judgment’s preclusive reach is measured by the claims the settling plaintiff pleaded or was authorized by her LWDA notice to plead, not by the words of her release, and an unauthorized proxy is in privity with no one. The court also upheld pandemic Emergency Rule 9, and it reserved issue preclusion while barring any double recovery.

Kindercare’s arbitration agreement contained a “poison pill”: a clause providing that the whole agreement is invalid if its class/representative-action waiver is unenforceable. Because a wholesale predispute waiver of representative PAGA claims cannot be enforced after Iskanian and Viking River, the Court of Appeal held the poison pill voided the entire agreement — sending every claim, including the employee’s individual claims, to court. Had Kindercare omitted the poison pill, Viking River would have let it compel the individual claims; its own drafting foreclosed that path. The drafter was held to the all-or-nothing clause it wrote.

Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, Inc. (Naranjo I)Premium pay owed for missed meal and rest breaks under Labor Code section 226.7 constitutes “wages,” so it must be reported on wage statements under section 226 and is subject to waiting-time penalties under section 203 when not timely paid at separation.Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, Inc. (2022) […]

Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel, LLC (2021) 11 Cal.5th 858 holds that the meal/rest premium under Labor Code § 226.7(c) must be paid at the “regular rate of compensation,” which is synonymous with the overtime “regular rate of pay” and includes all nondiscretionary payments — not just base hourly wages. The holding is retroactive.

Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC (2021) 11 Cal.5th 58 holds that employers may not round meal-period time punches, and that time records showing short, late, or missed meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of a violation — usable even at summary judgment.

The unpaid-wages component of section 558 is not a civil penalty recoverable through PAGA; only the fixed civil penalties ($50/$100 per employee per pay period) are PAGA penalties. Because the unpaid wages are not part of the PAGA claim, the trial court could not compel that portion to arbitration as if it were.

A PAGA plaintiff is presumptively entitled to discover the identities and contact information of other aggrieved employees statewide, subject to the employees’ privacy interests (which may be protected through a Belaire-West opt-out notice) rather than to a heightened threshold showing of merit before discovery.

Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc. (2016) 2 Cal.5th 257 holds that a compliant rest period must be free of both duties and employer control: an employer may not require employees to remain “on call” during a rest break, even if interruptions rarely occur.

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…

Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court (2012) 53 Cal.4th 1004 is California’s foundational meal-and-rest decision: an employer must provide a duty-free meal period but need not ensure no work is done; it sets the meal-timing and rest-period rules and confirms that courts may resolve merits questions enmeshed with class certification.

Two unions took assignments from more than 150 transportation workers and sued their employers under the UCL and PAGA for meal- and rest-break violations. The Supreme Court unanimously shut the door: after Proposition 64, an assignment cannot confer UCL standing on an uninjured assignee, and a PAGA claim cannot be assigned at all — the act creates no property right, so the aggrieved employee, suing as the state’s proxy, ‘does not own an assignable interest.’ Associational standing does not fill the gap, and representative UCL claims must proceed as class actions per the same-day companion, Arias. The state-proxy architecture announced here is the foundation Iskanian, Kim v. Reins, Adolph, and Turrieta all build on — and the 2024 reform kept its line intact.

The section 226.7 meal/rest payment is a wage (premium pay), not a penalty, and is therefore governed by the three-year statute of limitations applicable to wage claims rather than the one-year period for penalties.