California employment case index

Ask what California law says about rounding employees' time punches and the honest answer is that nobody knows. One Court of Appeal decision approved the practice in 2012, borrowing its standard from a federal regulation; it has never been overruled and still binds trial courts. But the Supreme Court has twice declined to adopt it, saying in Donohue that it "has never decided the validity of the rounding standard articulated in See's Candy I" — and then deciding that case on an assumption rather than an endorsement. Two Courts of Appeal have since rejected rounding where the employer captured exact minutes and underpaid anyway, and the Supreme Court granted review in both. The result is a genuine vacuum: the binding authority is the weakest, the strongest reasoning cannot bind, and the question sits with the Supreme Court in S277518. This piece sets out precisely what has been decided, what has not, and what to do in the meantime.

The Court of Appeal affirms a statewide preliminary injunction against Uber and Lyft, holding the People likely to prevail under prong B of the ABC test (Lab. Code, § 2775) — rideshare driving is within the usual course of the companies’ business — and rejecting the “technology platform” defense as a false dichotomy. (Predates Proposition 22; see Castellanos.)

There is no California statute or case law authorizing or prohibiting employee time rounding, so Division One borrowed the federal rule: an employer may round punch times to the nearest tenth of an hour if the policy is fair and neutral on its face and, as applied, does not fail over time to compensate employees for the time they actually worked. The posture is narrow – a writ vacating summary adjudication on two of the employer's affirmative defenses, with the court expressly leaving open whether either side will prevail. The plaintiff's expert lost the case by treating the employer's separate grace-period policy as if it were rounding. Whether neutral rounding survives at all is now pending before the California Supreme Court in Camp v. Home Depot, S277518.

In Lakin v. Watkins Associated Industries (1993) 6 Cal.4th 644, a unanimous California Supreme Court resolved three recurring procedural and damages questions: a postjudgment order denying discovery-sanction (cost-of-proof) attorney fees is separately appealable; a personal-injury plaintiff bears the burden of proving which portion of a general award is “damages for personal injury” before claiming Civil Code section 3291 prejudgment interest; and that interest never accrues on punitive damages. The court reversed the Court of Appeal and remanded.