Harris v. Superior Court, 207 Cal. App. 4th 1225 (2012)

Plaintiffs in this case are insurance claims adjusters who claim they were misclassified as exempt from overtime under the administrative exemption. The Court of Appeal held that because the adjusters’ primary work duties are the day-to-day tasks of adjusting individual claims and are not directly related to management policies or general business operations, the

We invite you to review our newly-posted January 2012 California Employment Law Notes – a comprehensive review of the latest and most significant developments in California employment law. The highlights include:

Harris v. Superior Court, 53 Cal.4th 170 (2011)

Plaintiffs in this case are claims adjusters employed by two insurance companies. They filed four putative class actions, claiming they had been erroneously classified as exempt administrative employees and seeking damages based upon unpaid overtime. The court of appeal held as a matter of law that plaintiffs were non-exempt employees who were entitled to overtime pay.

We invite you to review our newly posted July 2011 California Employment Law Notes — a comprehensive review of the latest and most significant developments in California employment law.  The highlights include:

Campbell v. PricewaterhouseCoopers, 642 F.3d 820 (2011)

Two thousand unlicensed junior accountants brought this wage-and-hour class action against PwC, alleging they were improperly classified as exempt from overtime. The parties filed cross-motions for partial summary judgment, and the district court granted the employees’ motion, holding as a matter of law that they were not exempt under the professional or administrative exemptions. The Ninth Circuit

Campbell v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, 2011 WL 2342740 (9th Cir. June 15, 2011) (pdf)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court’s grant of partial summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff-junior accountants, noting that the district court’s holding would produce “significantly troubling results” and create “highly problematic precedent affecting several non-accounting professions.” The plaintiffs, a class of approximately 2,000 current or former junior accountants resident in six California offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (“PwC”), claimed that PwC improperly classified them as “exempt” employees and failed to provide them overtime pay in accordance with California’s rigid overtime pay requirements. As “junior accountants,” the plaintiffs occupied the bottom two tiers of their department’s seven-tier hierarchy and performed, among other accounting functions, audits of financial records. While Certified Public Accountant (“CPA”) licenses were required for the five levels above them, the plaintiffs were unlicensed.

In re United Parcel Service Wage & Hour Cases, 2010 WL 4983586 (Cal. Ct. App. 2010)

At various times during his employment with UPS, David Taylor held three different jobs, including hub supervisor, on-road supervisor and center manager/business manager, in which he supervised numerous hourly employees and lower level supervisors. In all three jobs, Taylor worked in excess of eight hours per day and

D’Este v. Bayer Corp., 565 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 2009)

The Ninth Circuit has certified two questions of law to be answered by the California Supreme Court pursuant to Cal. Rule of Court 8.548: (1) Does a pharmaceutical sales representative (“PSR”) qualify as an “outside salesperson” under Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders 1-2001 and 4-2001 if the PSR spends more than half the working

Combs v. Skyriver Communications, Inc., 159 Cal. App. 4th 1242 (2008)

Mark Combs sued his former employer, Skyriver Communications, and Skyriver’s former interim CEO, Massih Tayebi, for violations of the California Labor Code, the Unfair Competition Law and the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004. Combs, who was employed as the manager of capacity planning and later as the director of network operations, alleged