California Employment Law Notes

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Noel v. River Hills Wilsons, Inc., 113 Cal. App. 4th 1363 (2003)

Brandon J. Noel sued his former employer, River Hills Wilsons, Inc. (Wilsons), and a Wilsons manager, Shelly Santillan, for defamation arising from Santillan’s erroneous statements to a background investigator (Choice- Point) retained by Noel’s new employer (GTE) that Noel left Wilsons because of “loss prevention issues” and that his “rehire status” was…

Ralphs Grocery Co. v. Superior Court, 112 Cal. App. 4th 1090 (2003)

David Swanson, a former store manager at a Ralphs grocery store, filed a class action against Ralphs for alleged violations of the California Labor Code and the Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code Section 17200). Swanson alleged that Ralphs had violated the law by making unlawful deductions from its employees’ bonuses…

DVD Copy Control Ass’n, Inc. v. Bunner, 31 Cal. 4th 864, 75 P.3d 1 (Cal. 2003)

Jon Johansen, a Norwegian resident, reverse engineered the Content Scrambling System (CSS), computer software used to encrypt the contents of Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs), and wrote a program called DeCSS that decrypts motion pictures stored on DVDs, thus enabling users to freely copy and distribute the movies. Johansen…

Theofel v. Farey-Jones, 341 F.3d 978 (9th Cir. 2003)

Douglas Wolf and Richard Buckingham, officers of Integrated Capital Associates, Inc. (ICA), were embroiled in commercial litigation against Alwyn Farey-Jones when Farey-Jones’s lawyer, Iryna Kwasny, subpoenaed ICA’s Internet Service Provider, NetGate, broadly seeking “all copies of emails sent or received by anyone.” NetGate, which was not represented by counsel, responded that the amount of e-mail…

Ishikawa v. Delta Airlines, Inc., 343 F.3d 1129 (9th Cir. 2003)

Yasuko Ishikawa, a Delta Airlines flight attendant, was terminated for failing a drug-detection urine test. Because the test had been performed negligently and had no validity, Delta rehired Ishikawa and paid her her lost income. Ishikawa also sued LabOne, the urine-testing laboratory, for negligence, and the jury awarded her $68,000 in economic and…

California School of Culinary Arts v. Lujan, 112 Cal. App. 4th 16 (2003)

The employer, California School of Culinary Arts (CSCA), failed to pay its instructors overtime under Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order 4-2001 on the ground that the instructors were subject to the professional exemption of the Wage Order. The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) disagreed, contending that the exemption did…

Chao v. A-One Med. Servs., Inc., 346 F.3d 908 (9th Cir. 2003)

The United States Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, brought this lawsuit on behalf of eight former employees of A-One Medical Services, Inc. and Alternative Rehabilitation Home Healthcare, Inc. to recover unpaid overtime payments under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Secretary and…

Banaitis v. CIR, 340 F.3d 1074 (9th Cir. 2003)

In his tort claims against his former employer (Bank of California) and its successor (Mitsubishi Bank), Sigitas Banaitis alleged wrongful discharge and interference with his employment agreement. After losing at trial in Oregon state court (where Banaitis obtained a $6.27 million verdict in his favor) and failing in their appeals, Mitsubishi Bank and the Bank…

Appling v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 340 F.3d 769 (9th Cir. 2003)

The State Farm agents in this case alleged that the company had terminated them in breach of their independent contractor agreements. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of State Farm, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that the termination provision did not require good cause and, in fact,…

Adams v. Pacific Bell Directory, 111 Cal. App. 4th 93 (2003)

Forty-two employees of Pacific Bell Directory (all of whom were members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) filed a lawsuit alleging that the company’s practice of debiting employees’ commissions was unlawful under Labor Code Section 221 and Business and Professions Code Section 17200. The employer promptly removed the action to federal court…