Class Actions

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Safeway, Inc. v. Superior Court, 238 Cal. App. 4th 1138 (2015)

Plaintiffs in this class action lawsuit alleged claims against Safeway and Vons for failure to provide meal and rest breaks, failure to provide itemized pay statements, unfair business practices under the Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”) and penalties under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”). Plaintiffs asserted that the employers…

Bridewell-Sledge v. Blue Cross of Cal., 2015 WL 4939641 (9th Cir. 2015)

Two similar class actions filed 13 minutes apart against the same defendants in the same California state court were consolidated by the state court “for all purposes.” Despite the fact that the two actions had been consolidated into a single action, defendants filed two separate notices of removal under the Class Action…

Augustus v. ABM Sec. Servs., Inc., 182 Cal. Rptr. 3d 676 (2015)

In this class action lawsuit, plaintiffs alleged that ABM did not provide rest periods to its security guard employees because it failed to relieve them of all duties and required them to remain on call during their breaks. The trial court certified the class and granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary adjudication, concluding…

LaCross v. Knight Transp. Inc., 775 F.3d 1200 (9th Cir. 2015)

In this putative class action, plaintiffs alleged that Knight Transportation had misclassified them as independent contractors when in fact they were employees who were not reimbursed their lease-related and fuel costs as required by Labor Code § 2802. Knight removed the case from state to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act…

Gerard v. Orange Coast Mem. Med. Ctr., 2015 WL 535730 (Cal. Ct. App. 2015)

In this putative class/Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA”) action, Jazmina Gerard (and others) challenged a hospital policy that allowed health care employees who worked shifts longer than 10 hours to voluntarily waive one of their two meal periods, even if their shifts lasted longer than 12 hours. Plaintiffs alleged that…

In re Walgreen Co. Overtime Cases, 231 Cal. App. 4th 437 (2014)

The putative class members in this case moved for class certification on the theory that although Walgreens’s stated policy on meal breaks was proper, its actual practice departed from its stated policy in an illegal and class wide way. The trial court denied class certification, and the Court of Appeal affirmed, holding…

Martinez v. Joe’s Crab Shack Holdings, 231 Cal. App. 4th 362 (2014)

Roberto Martinez and three other current or former employees of Joe’s Crab Shack (“JCS”) filed this putative class action asserting that they and similarly situated salaried managerial employees had been misclassified as exempt employees and were entitled to unpaid overtime and related wages. Plaintiffs alleged they worked more than 55 hours per…

When the California Supreme Court decided Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348 (2014), this June, some legal commentators assumed that employees could not waive pre-litigation claims under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). Those assumptions may have been premature. As we noted here, at least one federal court refused to apply Iskanian forcing an employee’s individual PAGA claims…

Lofton v. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, 2014 WL 5358364 (Cal. Ct. App. 2014)

The Initiative Law Group (“ILG”) represented more than 600 plaintiffs in a class action filed in Los Angeles against Wells Fargo that was initially certified and then was later decertified. After decertification, ILG continued to represent the plaintiffs in their individual lawsuits against Wells Fargo. A similar class action (in which…

Jiminez v. Allstate Ins. Co., 765 F.3d 1161 (9th Cir. 2014)

Jack Jiminez and approximately 800 other Allstate employees claimed that Allstate has a practice or unofficial policy of requiring its claims adjusters to work unpaid off-the-clock overtime in violation of California law. The district court certified the class with respect to the unpaid overtime, timely payment and unfair competition claims. The lower court…