Raines v. Coastal Pac. Food Distrib., Inc., 23 Cal. App. 5^th 667 (2018)

Terri Raines sued Coastal Pacific individually and under the Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) for failure to furnish her and other employees accurate itemized wage statements showing the applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate as required by Cal. Lab. Code § 226(a). The trial court determined that Raines had suffered no injury because the hourly overtime rate could be determined from the wage statement by simple math and dismissed both her individual and representative PAGA claims. The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment as to the PAGA claim (but not as to Raines’s individual claim), holding that “the trial court incorrectly found an employee must suffer an injury in order to bring a PAGA claim.” See also Huff v. Securitas Sec. Servs. USA, Inc., 23 Cal. App. 5^th 745 (2018) (an “aggrieved employee” may pursue penalties under PAGA for all Labor Code violations committed by an employer even if s/he is not personally affected by all of the violations); AHMC Healthcare, Inc. v. Superior Court, 2018 WL 3101350 (Cal. Ct. App. 2018) (employer not liable under PAGA if payroll system automatically and in a neutral manner rounds employee time up or down to the nearest quarter hour and overcompensates employees overall by a significant amount to the detriment of the employer).