Photo of Laura Reathaford

On October 12, 2013, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB 496, which, along with two other new laws (SB 666 and AB 263), expands protections for whistleblowers in California by significantly altering California Labor Code Section 1102.5, California’s general whistleblower statute. The amendments are effective January 1, 2014.

Before it was amended, Section 1102.5 already prohibited employers from retaliating against

The Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance will take effect on January 1, 2014, requiring employers with 20 or more employees in San Francisco to consider flexible scheduling for workers with caregiving responsibilities.  Intended to respond to “an increased number of women in the workforce, fewer households with children that have at least one parent staying at home full time, and more single-parent households,” the ordinance provides

In Chavarria v. Ralphs Grocery Co., No. 11-56673, 2013 WL 5779332 (9th Cir. Oct. 28, 2013), the plaintiff, a former deli clerk, brought a class action against Ralphs for various alleged wage and hour violations of the California Labor Code.  As a condition of employment, Chavarria signed an arbitration agreement containing a class action waiver.  Ralphs filed a motion to compel arbitration.

The U.S.

Frank Moreno agreed, as a condition of his employment with Sonic-Calabasas A, Inc., to arbitrate all of this employment disputes with his employer.  After terminating his employment with Sonic, Moreno filed an administrative wage claim with the Labor Commissioner for unpaid vacation pay.  Filing such a claim is the first step toward obtaining a “Berman” hearing (an administrative dispute resolution forum designed to assist employees

Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. provided Troy Martinez with a company vehicle to use in the execution of his duties.  After completing a day’s work, Martinez drove to Bakersfield with his family to purchase a car for his wife.  The trip to Bakersfield on this occasion exceeded his normal commute by approximately 140 miles (notably, Martinez had travelled to Bakersfield for work in the past).  After

After the renowned remand from the California Supreme Court, the Hohnbaum plaintiffs in Brinker Rest. Corp. v. Superior Court, 53 Cal. 4th 1004 (2012) sought to certify meal period claims alleging that all California employees were denied meal periods because Brinker’s corporate meal period policies were unlawful.

Plaintiffs argued that Brinker’s corporate policies were unlawful because (1) prior to 2002, it had no meal

In 2005, Congress passed the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), which creates federal jurisdiction over class actions involving more than 100 class members and $5 million in controversy. Plaintiffs have long attempted to avoid CAFA’s invocation of federal jurisdiction by stipulating to no more than $5 million in classwide damages. In Standard Fire Ins. Co. v. Knowles, 133 S. Ct. 1345 (2013), the Supreme

In a post last week, we noted a recent trend of federal courts strongly enforcing employment arbitration agreements under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). That trend continues in Richards v. Ernst & Young, LLP, Case No. 11-17530 (9th Cir. Aug. 21, 2013), which holds that a defendant’s pretrial participation in litigation does not, absent prejudice to the plaintiff, necessarily waive the defendant’s right to

Two recent decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit have reaffirmed the enforceability of employment-related arbitration agreements containing class action waivers. In Sutherland v. Ernst & Young and Raniere v. Citigroup, Inc. the Second Circuit held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) requires courts to enforce a valid agreement to arbitrate even where the relevant substantive law – here, the Fair

Pamela Silva brought a wage-and-hour class action against her former employer, See’s Candy Shops, Inc., alleging, in part, that See’s failed to pay her wages for all hours worked because the See’s timekeeping system rounded employee time entries to the nearest tenth of an hour/nearest six minutes.  In response to the complaint, See’s alleged that its use of rounding was consistent with state and federal