Rosas v. Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop, 627 F.3d 1288 (2010) (en banc)

Cesar Rosas and Jesus Alcazar were Catholic seminarians who sued the Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop for, among other things, failure to pay them overtime wages under Washington state law. Based on the ministerial exception, the district court dismissed the case on the pleadings. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit…

Overhill Farms, Inc. v. Lopez, 190 Cal. App. 4th 1248 (2010)

After the IRS notified Overhill Farms that 231 of its then-current employees had provided invalid social security numbers, Overhill contacted the employees identified by the IRS, advised them that their social security numbers were invalid according to the IRS, and provided them with the opportunity to correct the erroneous information in order to…

Pineda v. Bank of America, 50 Cal. 4th 1389 (2010)

Although plaintiff Jorge A. Pineda gave two weeks’ notice of his resignation from Bank of America, the bank did not pay him his final wages on his last day of employment, as required by Cal. Labor Code § 202, but instead paid him four days late. In this putative class action, Pineda sued for…

 On December 6, 2010, the United States Supreme Court granted Wal-Mart’s petition for certiorari, agreeing to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision [pdf] to permit certification of a class of 500,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.  This litigation, which has been ongoing for nearly a decade, alleges sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against…

On November 18, the California Supreme Court in Pineda v. Bank of America, No. S170758 (Cal. Nov. 18, 2010) (pdf) clarified two issues regarding so-called “waiting time penalties” (i.e., penalties under California Labor Code Section 203 associated with the late payment of final wages upon termination of employment). First, the Court ruled that a three-year statute of limitations applies to such actions, whether or not accompanied by a claim for the underlying late wages. Second, it held that waiting time penalties are not recoverable as restitution under California’s unfair competition law, Business and Professions Code Section 17200 (the “UCL”). While the latter ruling is marginally beneficial to employers by limiting liability under the UCL, the Court’s finding of a three-year statute of limitations for waiting time penalties dramatically expands potential employer liability.

On November 3, 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear an appeal brought by a Harrah’s Las Vegas casino dealer challenging the District Court’s ruling that her proposed state wage-and-hour class action was preempted by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  In so doing, the Ninth Circuit chose not to revisit the District Court’s ruling that the plaintiff could not assert parallel federal and state wage-and-hour class actions.  This ruling provides welcome relief to employers threatened by such a multiplicity of claims.

California has enacted the “California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010” (S.B. 657), which will require retail sellers and manufacturers that do business in California and that have over $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their direct supply chains for tangible goods offered for sale. (The new law becomes effective on…

Garcia v. Four Points Sheraton LAX, 188 Cal. App. 4th 364 (2010)

In 2006, the City of Los Angeles enacted the Hotel Service Charge Reform Ordinance, which required non-unionized hotels in the Century Boulevard Corridor near LAX to pass along mandatory service charges to the workers who rendered the services for which the charges were collected. (The service workers alleged their income had declined…

Sullivan v. Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., 623 F.3d 770 (2010)

Christina Sullivan was the manager of a Factory 2-U store before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Dollar Tree later purchased Factory 2-U’s existing leasehold on the store where Sullivan was employed. Prior to the anniversary of her hire by Dollar Tree, Sullivan’s mother became ill but Dollar Tree did not provide Sullivan with…

Wang v. Chinese Daily News, 623 F.3d 743 (2010)

Plaintiffs (reporters for the Chinese Daily News) alleged they were non-exempt employees entitled to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and California state law. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the reporters, finding journalists are not subject to the creative professional exemption to the FLSA or California law. The…