California employment case index

A firm filed a wage-and-hour class action duplicating one it had already filed elsewhere, then opposed a stay with a brief — drafted by a contract attorney using generative AI — full of nonexistent citations and at least eight fabricated quotations. The First District affirms $6,000 in section 128.7 sanctions: counsel of record bear ultimate responsibility for what they sign, and the duty to verify authority cannot be delegated to any form of technology.

Two veterinary workers signed a standing written waiver of their meal break for shifts of six hours or less — revocable at any time — then sued years later, arguing meal periods can be waived only shift by shift after the right accrues. Division Seven disagreed: section 512 and the wage orders are silent on timing and form, and eighty years of IWC history treats written prospective waivers as employee protection, not evasion. But the holding is expressly conditional: the court reserved unconscionable, coerced, unknowing, and irrevocable waivers, and oral prospective waivers entirely. Bradsbery is a safe harbor for clean waiver programs — and a litigation roadmap against defective ones.

Quach v. California Commerce Club, Inc.California abandons its arbitration-specific rule requiring proof of prejudice to establish that a party waived the right to compel arbitration; waiver is now governed by the same general contract principles — proof by clear and convincing evidence of an intentional relinquishment — that apply to any other contractual right.Quach v. […]

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.

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.