The recent court opinion in Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC et al involves quite literally a Hollywood drama, but it’s chock-full of practical lessons for employers in and outside Tinseltown —particularly those with connections to California. The case touches on alleged worker misclassification, retaliation, and the geographic reach of California’s strict employment laws.
The well-publicized dispute stems from the production of the 2024 film It
The Ninth Circuit delivered a significant win for employers involved in arbitration in O’Dell, et al. v. Aya Healthcare Services, Inc., holding that employees cannot sidestep arbitration agreements by selectively relying upon past rulings of other arbitrators in cases involving other parties to invalidate a particular arbitration agreement.
The case arose from unpaid wage claims brought by former employees of Aya Healthcare, a travel
Ratha v. Rubicon Resources, LLC, 168 F.4th 541 (9th Cir. 2026) (en banc)
Plaintiffs are villagers from rural Cambodia who allegedly were forced to work at seafood factories in Thailand and who alleged that Rubicon marketed in the United States seafood products from those factories, thus participating in a venture that benefited from human trafficking. The district court had previously
Parsonage v. Wal-Mart Assocs., Inc., 118 Cal. App. 5th 399 (2026)
Before beginning employment with Wal-Mart, Tina Parsonage executed a “Background Report Disclosure” form that authorized Wal-Mart to conduct a background check on her. Three years later, Parsonage sued Wal-Mart for violating the California Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA, Cal. Civ. Code § 1786, et seq.) by failing to identify the
De Paolo v. Rosales, 118 Cal. App. 5th Supp. 1 (2026)
John R. De Paolo is the owner and trustee of the real property for which Jenny Rosales was the property manager/tenant. After De Paolo terminated Rosales’s employment, he served her with a 30-day notice to quit the premises. The trial court found that Rosales did not have an independent right of possession
Sorokunov v. NetApp, Inc., 2026 WL 590943 (Cal. Ct. App. 2026)
Alexander Sorokunov sued NetApp for various Labor Code violations, including PAGA. NetApp filed a petition to compel arbitration of Sorokunov’s individual claims, which the trial court granted. After the arbitrator entered an award in favor of NetApp, the trial court confirmed the award and granted NetApp’s motion for judgment on the pleadings on
Avery v. TEKsystems, Inc., 165 F.4th 1219 (9th Cir. 2026)
More than 22 months after the commencement of a putative class action alleging various wage and hour law violations, TEK rolled out a new, mandatory arbitration agreement that automatically applied to putative class members unless they quit their jobs or affirmatively opted out of the Agreement. The district court declined to enforce
Fuentes v. Empire Nissan, Inc., 19 Cal. 5th 93 (2026)
When applying to work at Empire Nissan, Evangelina Yanez Fuentes was given an employment application packet that included an arbitration agreement that was written in a very small font with text that was “so blurry and broken up that it is nearly unreadable.” When Fuentes went on medical leave for cancer treatment two
California—where the sun shines, the waves crash, and juries keep dishing out verdicts so large they should come with their own seismic scale. Since our Special Halloween Edition on California’s “scariest” employment law verdicts, the trend toward “nuclear” and even “thermonuclear” jury awards (exceeding $100 million) has not only continued—it’s accelerated. And if employers thought this was just a seasonal horror story, think again: