Seyfarth Synopsis: PAGA reform was officially introduced in the state Assembly and Senate! The language of the bills were released detailing the most substantive changes to PAGA in its 20-year history, and Governor Newsom signed them into law on July 1, 2024. The bills have numerous provisions that benefit California employers, including imposing more restrictive standing requirements for plaintiffs, codifying

Continue Reading PAGA Reform: AB 2288 and SB 92 Passed

Seyfarth Synopsis: Members of the plaintiffs’ bar submit about 500 PAGA notices each month to California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency. Each notice presages yet another PAGA lawsuit against yet another hapless California employer. But today we consider a new sort of PAGA-focused lawsuit. This recent complaint filed last week is not on behalf of a California law enforcement agency
Continue Reading Man Bites Dog: This PAGA Lawsuit Is Different

Readers interested in developments concerning California’s unique Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) may want to delve into a short thought piece (actually advice to the California Legislature) on a recently-proposed bill that would amend PAGA. To read that post, also available on Seyfarth’s Wage & Hour Litigation Blog, please click here or at the end of the synopsis.

Seyfarth Synopsis:
Continue Reading A Cautionary Comment on PAGA (or Plaintiffs’ Attorneys Getting Around) Legislative Intent

By David Kadue

On Tuesday, January 20, 2015, the Court declined to take the case of CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC v. Iskanian, in which an employer asked the Court to reverse a ruling of the California Supreme Court. At issue was whether an employee who has agreed to submit all employment-related claims to arbitration, and who has also agreed to waive participation in class and representative actions, can evade that agreement and sue the employer under California’s Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA”). The California Supreme Court in June 2014 had sided with the suing employee.

Many observers expected that the case would be the latest episode in a drama that features a complicated relationship between two supreme courts. To simplify a bit, the U.S. Supreme Court traditionally has read the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) to require the enforcement of private arbitration agreements by their terms. The California Supreme Court, meanwhile, has often searched creatively for some Cal-centric reason to deny enforcement to arbitration agreements.

Recent examples of the contrasting supreme viewpoints have occurred in the context of arbitration agreements that waive the procedural right to proceed or participate in a class action. The California Supreme Court once held, in both the consumer-claim context and in the employee-claim context, that a class-action waiver in an arbitration agreement is unenforceable, because any such waiver offends the California public policy favoring class actions. But then the U.S. Supreme Court, in Concepion v. AT&T Mobility, ruled in 2011 that the FAA preempts the California ban on class-action waivers. Concepion involved a consumer complaint. For several years, California courts resisted the clear implication that Concepcion also applies to employee complaints. Finally, in Iskanian, the California Supreme Court relented, acknowledging that, under the FAA, class-action waivers in arbitration agreements are enforceable, even in California.
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Referee Slugfest Between Federal and California Courts on Enforceability of Arbitration Agreements

By David D. Kadue and Simon L. Yang

Remember the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The overconfident fellow who refuses to desist, even after losing four limbs in combat? Some lawyers are like that.

Although the California Supreme Court in Iskanian (June 23, 2014) upheld employer efforts to force waivers of class-action claims in mandatory arbitration agreements, some plaintiffs’ lawyers say that the real take-away from Iskanian is its holding that those agreements cannot be used to waive an employee’s right to bring representative PAGA actions. Moreover, say these lawyers, PAGA actions are particularly potent for plaintiffs because they are categorically unremovable to federal court, thus permitting the plaintiff to remain in more favorable state court.

So does this mean that Iskanian really was a disaster, signaling a new reign of terror for hapless employers who now must confront “gotcha” claims of obscure wage and hour violations while being subject exclusively to the tender mercies of California Superior Court?

Well, perhaps there are a couple of chinks in the Black Knight’s armor.

First, how solid is the dogmatic view about categorical unremovability of PAGA claims? PAGA cases once were routinely removed to federal court under diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction, where the defendant employer was a non-California citizen and the amount in controversy exceeded the jurisdictional threshold ($75,000 in an individual action or $5,000,000 in a class action, although PAGA claims need not be brought as class actions). The amount in controversy was often easy to establish, as PAGA penalties mount rapidly: $100 per employee per pay period, even if one counts only the 25% of the penalties that go to the employees (75% go to the State of California).

But recent Ninth Circuit decisions dropped flies in the removal ointment. They rejected the efforts of removing defendants, in calculating the amount in controversy, to aggregate the potential individual recoveries of all the employees the plaintiff purported to represent. These decisions now suggest that one should consider only the PAGA plaintiff’s individual recovery, which would be well below $75,000. And the Ninth Circuit has stated, rather elliptically, that the State of California is not a citizen, suggesting that this observation precludes a finding of diversity of citizenship. Hence the basis for a new conventional wisdom that PAGA claims are categorically unremovable. But is this necessarily so?
Continue Reading After Iskanian, What’s Next For Defending PAGA Actions?

Paga is a city in Ghana, well-known for its crocodile pools.  PAGA, California’s Private Attorneys General Act of 2004, allows employees to sue their employers on behalf of themselves and other “aggrieved” employees to recover penalties for Labor Code violations.  What do the two, other than a shared moniker, have in common?  Run afoul of either and you’re bound to
Continue Reading Plaintiffs’ Bar Agog Over PAGA’s Subsequent Violations

Labor Code Section 226 makes California employers liable for penalties if they issue inadequate wage statements that cause ‘injury.” Courts generally have denied penalty claims where hypertechnical violations did not cause real harm. Unsatisfied with this result, employee advocates lobbied for a 2012 amendment. Senate Bill 1255, effective January 1, 2013, amends Section 226(e) to deem “injury” to occur
Continue Reading The 2013 Amendment to the Wage-Statement Statute: A Dog With Bark Worse Than Bite?