Canales v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 23 Cal. App. 5^th 1262 (2018)

Fabio Canales and Andy Cortes sued Wells Fargo under PAGA for an alleged violation of Cal. Lab. Code § 226 for failure to provide an itemized wage statement concurrently with a terminated employee’s final wages paid in-store. The trial court granted summary judgment to Wells Fargo on the ground that it had complied with the statute by furnishing the wage statements by mail. The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in favor of Wells Fargo on the ground that mailing the final wage statement is a “viable means to ‘furnish’” it because the statute requires that the wage statement be furnished “semimonthly or at the time of each payment of wages.” In so holding the Court rejected the Labor Commissioner’s more restrictive interpretation of the statute as a “void underground regulation.”