Justia Class Action Opinion Summaries

The Colorado Supreme Court granted review in this case to consider whether the common law litigation privilege for party-generated publicity in pending class action litigation excluded situations in which the identities of class members were ascertainable through discovery. In 2018, two law firms, Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP and Towards Justice (collectively, along with attorney Mari Newman of Killmer, Lane & Newman, “the attorneys”), filed on behalf of former employee and nail technician Lisa Miles and those similarly situated a federal class action lawsuit. This lawsuit named as defendants BKP, Inc.; Ella Bliss Beauty Bar LLC; Ella Bliss Beauty Bar-2, LLC; and Ella Bliss Beauty Bar-3, LLC (collectively, “the employer”), among others. The employer operated three beauty bars in the Denver metropolitan area. Pertinent here, the class action complaint alleged that the employer’s business operation was “founded on the exploitation of its workers.” The complaint alleged that the employer violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Colorado Wage Claim Act by not paying service technicians for hours spent performing janitorial work, electing to forgo hiring a janitorial service. The Supreme Court concluded the division erred in conditioning the applicability of the litigation privilege in pending class action litigation on whether the identities of class members were ascertainable through discovery. The Court reached this conclusion for two reasons: (1) ascertainability was generally a requirement in class action litigation, and imposing such a condition would unduly limit the privilege in this kind of case; and (2) the eventual identification of class members by way of documents obtained during discovery was not a substitute for reaching absent class members and witnesses in the beginning stages of litigation. The Court found the litigation privilege applied in this case: five allegedly defamatory statements at issue "merely repeated, summarized, or paraphrased the allegations made in the class action complaint, and which served the purpose of notifying the public, absent class members, and witnesses about the litigation, were absolutely privileged." View "Killmer, Lane & Newman v. B.K.P., Inc." on Justia Law

Barrera and Varguez sued Apple, a nationwide restaurant chain, to recover civil penalties under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) (Labor Code 2698) for Labor Code violations suffered by them and by other employees. Apple unsuccessfully moved to compel arbitration.The court of appeal reversed in part, first rejecting a claim that Apple waived the right to arbitrate by “litigating this case for over a year” before moving to compel arbitration. Citing the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision, "Viking River Cruises," and the Federal Arbitration Act (9 U.S.C. 1), the court concluded that the parties’ agreements require arbitration of the PAGA claims that seek to recover civil penalties for Labor Code violations committed against the plaintiffs. The PAGA claims seeking civil penalties for Labor Code violations committed against other employees may be pursued by the plaintiffs in the trial court. In defining the scope of arbitrable claims, the Agreements permissibly provide that only individual PAGA claims can be arbitrated. The plaintiffs’ individual claims can be arbitrated—unless the Agreements are unenforceable on some other ground; the plaintiffs did not meet their burden in establishing the Agreements are unconscionable. The court remanded for determination of whether a stay of the non-individual PAGA claims would be appropriate. View "Barrera v. Apple American Group LLC" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court held that an employer's business entity agents can be held directly liable under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), Cal. Gov. Code 12900 et seq., for employment discrimination in appropriate circumstances when the business entity agent has at least five employees and carries out activities regulated by FEHA on behalf of an employer.Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and an alleged class, brought this action alleging claims under the FEHA, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, unfair competition law, and the common law right of privacy. Plaintiffs named as a defendant U.S. Healthworks Medical Group (USHW), who was acting as an agent of Plaintiffs' prospective employers. The district court dismissed all claims, concluding, as relevant to this appeal, that the FEHA does not impose liability on the agents of a plaintiff's employer. The federal district court of appeals certified a question of law to the Supreme Court, which answered that FEHA permits a business entity acting as an agent of an employer to be held directly liable as an employer for employment discrimination, in violation of FEHA, when the business entity has at least five employees and carries out FEHA-regulated activities on behalf of an employer. View "Raines v. U.S. Healthworks Medical Group" on Justia Law

Heriberto Chavez, Evangelina Escarcega (representing her son, Jose Escarcega), and Jorge Moreno (collectively “Plaintiffs”) sought to represent a class in a lawsuit against Plan Benefit Services, Fringe Insurance Benefits, and Fringe Benefit Group (collectively “FBG”) for the alleged mismanagement t of funds that Plaintiffs contributed to benefit plans through their employers.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s determination that the litigation may proceed as a class-action lawsuit. The court held that Plaintiffs have standing and certification is appropriate under Rule 23(b)(1)(B) or (b)(3). The court explained that here, Plaintiffs have established their standing to sue FBG. First, they have demonstrated injury in fact by alleging that FBG abused its authority under the Master Trust Agreement by hiring itself to perform services paid with funds from the CERT and CPT trusts, effectively devaluing the trusts and retirement benefits that Plaintiffs otherwise would have accrued with their employer. Second, they have established that their injury is traceable to FBG’s conduct by providing evidence of FBG’s direct control over the CERT and CPT trusts and the underlying contractual agreement with their employer. Finally, their injury is redressable in this court by awarding monetary damages or other relief. View "Chavez v. Plan Benefit Services" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a former employee, sued on behalf of herself and similarly situated employees, claiming that St. Luke’s violated the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (“FLSA”) overtime provisions by failing to fully compensate employees for work performed. She also brought an unjust-enrichment claim under state law. The district court certified two classes with different lookback periods: (1) an FLSA collective comprised of employees who worked for St. Luke’s between September 2016 and September 2018, 1 and (2) an unjust-enrichment class comprised of all employees who worked for St. Luke’s in Missouri between April 2012 and September 2018. Houston also asserted individual claims, one under the Missouri Minimum Wage Law, and one for breach of her employment contract. The district court granted summary judgment to St. Luke’s on all claims.   The Eighth Circuit vacated and remanded. The court explained that Plaintiff has raised a genuine dispute that the rounding policy does not average out over time. The court explained that no matter how one slices the data, most employees and the employees as a whole fared worse under the rounding policy than had they been paid according to their exact time worked. Here, the rounding policy did both. It resulted in lost time for nearly two-thirds of employees, and those employees lost more time than was gained by their coworkers who benefited from rounding. The court concluded that the employees have raised a genuine dispute that the rounding policy, as applied, did not average out over time. The district court, therefore, erred in granting summary judgment on the FLSA and Missouri wage claims. View "Torri Houston v. St. Luke's Health System, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs brought this class action against the Plan’s administrator, AT&T Services, Inc., and the committee responsible for some of the Plan’s investment-related duties, the AT&T Benefit Plan Investment Committee (collectively, “AT&T”). Plaintiffs alleged that AT&T failed to investigate and evaluate all the compensation that the Plan’s recordkeeper, Fidelity Workplace Services, received from mutual funds through BrokerageLink, Fidelity’s brokerage account platform, and from Financial Engines Advisors, L.L.C. Plaintiffs alleged that (1) AT&T’s failure to consider this compensation rendered its contract with Fidelity a “prohibited transaction” under ERISA Section 406, (2) AT&T breached its fiduciary duty of prudence by failing to consider this compensation, and (3) AT&T breached its duty of candor by failing to disclose this compensation to the Department of Labor.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Defendants. The panel reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment on the prohibited transaction claim. Relying on the statutory text, regulatory text, and the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration’s explanation for a regulatory amendment, the panel held that the broad scope of Section 406 encompasses arm’s-length transactions. The panel held that the broad scope of § 406 encompasses arm’s-length transactions. Disagreeing with other circuits, the panel concluded that AT&T, by amending its contract with Fidelity to incorporate the services of BrokerageLink and Financial Engines, caused the Plan to engage in a prohibited transaction. The panel remanded for the district court to consider whether AT&T met the requirements for an exemption from the prohibited transaction bar. View "ROBERT BUGIELSKI, ET AL V. AT&T SERVICES, INC., ET AL" on Justia Law

Nicole Woodworth was a registered nurse at Loma Linda University Medical Center (the medical center) from December 2011 to June 2014. In June 2014, she filed this putative class action against the medical center, alleging a host of wage and hour claims on behalf of herself and other employees. She later amended her complaint to add a cause of action under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA). After several years of litigation, only her individual claim for failure to provide rest periods remained. The trial court had granted four motions for summary judgment in favor of the medical center, denied Woodworth’s motion for class certification, and denied her motion to strike putative class members’ declarations. Woodworth appealed those orders, which disposed of the putative class members’ claims, the PAGA claims, and all of her individual claims (apart from her claim about rest periods). The medical center moved to dismiss most of Woodworth’s appeal, but the Court of Appeal denied the motion, affirming the orders in large part. Specifically, the Court reversed in part the order denying class certification: the court erred with respect to Woodworth’s proposed wage statement class, which consisted of employees who received allegedly inaccurate wage statements. The case was remanded for the trial court to reconsider certification of that class. View "Woodworth v. Loma Linda Univ. Med. Center" on Justia Law

This is a putative class action by three truck drivers against their employer, Domino’s Pizza. The court previously affirmed the district court’s denial of Domino’s motion to compel arbitration, holding that because the drivers were a “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce,” their claims were exempted from the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) by 9 U.S.C. Section 1.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order denying Domino Pizza’s motion to compel arbitration in a putative class action brought by three Domino truck drivers, alleging violations of California labor law. The panel stated that its prior decision squarely rested upon its reading of Rittmann v. Amazon.com, Inc., 971 F.3d 904 (9th Cir. 2020), which concerned Amazon delivery drivers. The panel found no clear conflict between Rittmann and Saxon and nothing in Saxon that undermined the panel’s prior reasoning that because the plaintiff drivers in this case, like the Amazon package delivery drivers in Rittmann, transport interstate goods for the last leg to their final destinations, they are engaged in interstate commerce under Section 1. View "EDMOND CARMONA, ET AL V. DOMINO'S PIZZA, LLC" on Justia Law

Appellees worked as non-emergency medical transportation drivers. In July 2017, they brought a putative class action and Fair Labor Standards Act collective action against Medical Transportation Management, Inc. (“MTM”). Their complaint alleged that MTM is their employer and had failed to pay them and its other drivers their full wages as required by both federal and District of Columbia law. MTM appealed the district court’s certification of an “issue class” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c)(4) and its denial of MTM’s motion to decertify plaintiffs’ Fair Labor Standards Act collective action.   The DC Circuit remanded the district court’s certification of the issue class because the court failed to ensure that it satisfies the class-action criteria specified in Rules 23(a) and (b). The court declined to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction to review the district court’s separate decision on the Fair Labor Standards Act collective action. The court explained that because the resolution of the action will bind absent class members, basic principles of due process require that they be notified that their individual claims are being resolved and that they may opt out of the action if they so choose. So if the district court certifies the issue class under Rule 23(b)(3) on remand, it must direct “the best notice that is practicable” as part of any certification order. View "Isaac Harris v. Medical Transportation Management, Inc." on Justia Law

In 2018, Anaheim voters approved a Living Wage Ordinance (LWO). The LWO applied to hospitality employers in the Anaheim or Disneyland Resort areas that benefited from a “City Subsidy.” In 2019, Kathleen Grace and other plaintiffs (“Employees”) filed a class action complaint against the Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, U.S., Inc. (“Disney”) and Sodexo, Inc., and Sodexomagic, LLC (“Sodexo”) alleging a violation of the LWO (Sodexo operated restaurants in Disney’s theme parks). Disney moved for summary judgment and Sodexo joined. It was undisputed the Employees were not being paid the required minimum hourly wage under the LWO. However, Disney argued it was not covered under the LWO as a matter of law because it was not benefitting from a “City Subsidy.” The trial court granted the motion for summary judgment. The Court of Appeal disagreed: “A ‘City Subsidy’ is any agreement with the city pursuant to which a person other than the city has a right to receive a rebate of transient occupancy tax, sales tax, entertainment tax, property tax or other taxes, presently or in the future, matured or unmatured.” The Court determined that through a "reimbursement agreement," Disney had the right to a rebate on transient occupancy taxes (paid by hotel guests), sales taxes (paid by consumers), and property taxes (paid by Disney), in any years when the City’s tax revenues were sufficient to meet certain bond obligations. Consequently, the Court found Disney received a “City Subsidy” within the meaning of the LWO and was therefore obligated to pay its employees the designated minimum wages. View "Grace v. The Walt Disney Company" on Justia Law