On July 17, 2023, approximately one year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Viking River Cruises, the California Supreme Court issued its highly-anticipated decision in Adolph v. Uber Technologies. The Court answered the critical question of whether a Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) plaintiff retains their standing to pursue non-individual claims after their individual claims are compelled to arbitration. As many
In 2014, the California Supreme Court determined that Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) claims are immune from arbitration in Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC – which, unsurprisingly, led to an avalanche of PAGA claims being filed as plaintiffs’ lawyers scrambled to make their cases arbitration-proof (at least as to those pesky
Vanessa Young worked as an employee of staffing company RemX Specialty Staffing and was temporarily assigned to work at Bank of the West. Young allegedly “verbally abused” a RemX representative on a call about delivery of her paycheck. Young claimed that the RemX representative “basically” fired her from RemX; however, the representative
Many California employers and their counsel remain blissfully ignorant of the latest “gotcha” law in California, which can easily derail an otherwise perfectly planned arbitration. Back in 2019, the California legislature, an implacable foe of arbitration agreements, set a booby trap for unsuspecting employers by requiring the timely payment of arbitration fees and costs on pain of “waiving” the right to arbitrate. (The same gotcha
On May 10, 2023, the California Supreme Court heard oral argument in Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., a closely watched case that will decide whether a Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) plaintiff loses standing to pursue a representative claim when their individual PAGA claim is compelled to arbitration.
Observers hoping for a sign that the court was inclined to rule for the employer may
Back in the “good old days,” arbitration agreements barred just about any type of civil litigation that was filed in court. Then, as we reported in 2014, the California Supreme Court determined that Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) claims are immune from arbitration in Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC – which, unsurprisingly, led to an avalanche of PAGA claims being filed as plaintiffs’
Labor & Employment Co-Chair Tony Oncidi was recently interviewed for the Lexis Practical Guidance podcast (links below):
The California Supreme Court has scheduled oral argument for May 9, 2023 in Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., a closely watched case that concerns whether a Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) plaintiff loses standing to pursue a representative claim when their individual PAGA claim is compelled to arbitration. This question was left open by the blockbuster decision in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana
Labor Co-Chair Tony Oncidi joins Bloomberg Law podcast host June Grasso to discuss the roller coaster verdicts in a Tesla racial harassment case. We covered the original $137 million verdict here, and again here, which was recently reduced by a San Francisco jury to $3.175 million.
We invite you to listen to Tony’s interview with Bloomberg Law here (the interview begins at the
An astronomical $137 million jury verdict against Tesla has again been reduced, for a second (and potentially final) time. Last Monday, following a five-day trial on damages, a federal court jury awarded Owen Diaz, a former Tesla elevator operator, $175,000 in emotional distress damages and $3 million in punitive damages, totaling nearly $3.2 million—almost $134 million shy of the award he originally obtained in 2021.