Insurance Litigation Law Blog | Regulatory Law | Bad Faith | California | Lawyer | Attorney | Barger & Wolen

On October 3, 2011, the California Supreme Court heard argument in Francis Harris et al v. Superior Court, Case No. S156555. The issue here is whether insurance adjusters should be eligible for overtime pay under California’s wage and hour laws. 

In 2007, the California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division One, ruled that insurance adjusters who sued Golden Eagle and Liberty Mutual were nonexempt from California’s overtime laws. The insurers had argued that the adjustors were subject to the “administrative exemption” to California’s overtime rules, which provides that persons employed in “administrative, executive, or professional capacities” are exempt from overtime.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Court of Appeal disagreed. 

Justice Rothschild wrote the opinion of the Court, pursuing a lengthy and complicated analysis of California and federal law to reach the conclusion that adjustors were not exempt. 

Noting that California law requires that exempt administrative employees be “primarily engaged in office or non-manual work” that is “directly related to management policies or general business operations,” the Court concluded that this requirement was only satisfied if such work relates to the administrative operations of a business as distinguished from production or, in retail services, sales work. 

Applying this “administrative/production worker dichotomy,” the Court held, adjustors were not subject to the administrative exemption, since their work involved the daily carrying out of the insurance business’ affairs, and had no effect on the policies adopted by the Company or general business operations.

Justice Vogel dissented, wryly noting that “[t]he majority’s analysis is complex. Mine is not.” 

Noting that federal regulations, which are incorporated into California’s regulations by reference, specifically note that claims adjustors constitute administrative employees, Justice Vogel would have rejected the “administrative/production” dichotomy as a test. Instead, she pointed to applicable federal regulations, which specifically provide that work performed by employees who advise, plan, negotiate, and represent management are administrative employees. 

Watch this space. We’ll keep you posted on developments as they occur.

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In Hernandez v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., published October 28, 2010, the California Court of Appeal held that, while employers must provide employees with breaks, they need not ensure employees actually take their breaks. 

Rogelio Hernandez (Hernandez) brought this class action against Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. for allegedly denying employees meal and rest breaks. In moving for certification, Hernandez submitted statistical evidence allegedly showing that a overwhelming majority of employees missed their breaks, e.g. 92% of employees missed at least one meal break.

Chipolte also filed a motion, but to deny certification, and it presented evidence of a company-wide policy encouraging meal and rest breaks. As noted by the Court, Chipotle provides employees with free food and beverages during breaks. Because Chipotle paid employees during breaks, the employee time records may not reflect whether breaks were actually taken.

In determining whether certification was appropriate, both the trial court and appellate court addressed the legal issue of whether employers must only provide breaks, or whether employers must also ensure that breaks are actually taken.

The Court recognized that this issue was currently pending review before the California Supreme Court (Brinker v. Public Storage, S166350, and Brinkley v. Public Storage, S168806), but ruled that the Supreme Court would likely hold that employers need not ensure that breaks are actually taken.

The Court stated that placing this obligation on employers would place an

undue burden on employers whose employees are numerous or who … do not appear to remain in contact with the employer during the day.”

It would also create

perverse incentives, encouraging employees to violate company meal break policy in order to receive extra compensation under California wage and hour laws.”

The decision is significant not only for its substance, but also for procedural reasons. 

Class counsel often times will argue on certification motions that their legal theory of liability and damages should not be decided on certification, because certification is only a procedural, not a merits question. This misstates what a trial court may be obligated to review for certification.

In order to decide whether common or individual issues predominate, it must be determined at the certification stage how the law requires liability and damages to be proven at trial. This inquiry may not be able to be satisfied without the trial court actually addressing what the law is at the certification stage, and in certain cases where the certification issues are intertwined with the merits issues some analysis of the merits is permitted.

As noted by the Hernandez trial court, if the law does require employers to ensure breaks are actually taken, class treatment of this case would be appropriate. Having held that the law only requires employers to provide breaks, certification in this action was inappropriate.

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Another California appellate decision has restricted the ability to challenge class action allegations at the pleading stage, reiterating that the determination of class suitability in most instances should be made at the time of a motion for class certification.

In Gutierrez v. California Commerce Club, Inc. (published August 23, 2010), the class representative filed suit alleging the defendant unlawfully denied meal and rest breaks to hourly, non-union employees. After a challenge to the third amended complaint, the trial court sustained the demurrer to the class action allegation without leave to amend, observing that the plaintiffs had failed to “notify the court who is in the class, what they do, how they are related and why plaintiffs are the proper persons to represent this all-inclusive class.” 

Division One of the Court of Appeal reversed, finding the trial court’s dismissal of the class premature and that the allegations of the operative complaint adequate to move beyond the pleading stage. 

In so concluding the class could proceed, the court observed:

Judicial policy in California has long discouraged trial courts from determining class sufficiency at the pleading stage and directed that this issue be determined by a motion for class certification.

Quoting another recent decision from last year, the court explained that “the wisdom of permitting the action to survive a demurrer is elementary.” The court elaborated as follows:

It is clear that the more intimate the judge becomes with the character of the action, the more intelligently he may make the determination. If the judicial machinery encourages the decision to be made at the pleading stages and the judge decides against class litigation, he divests the court of the power to later alter that decision. . . . Therefore, because the sustaining of demurrers without leave to amend represents the earliest possible determination of the propriety of class action litigation, it should be looked upon with disfavor.

While the court did reference a number of California decision that had permitted class allegations to be dismissed or stricken at the pleading stage, it relegated those decisions to cases involving “mass torts or other actions in which individual issues predominate.” And, in the context of wage and hour cases (as was the situation in Gutierrez), the court explained that such cases “routinely proceed as class actions” since they “usually involve” a single set of facts that apply to all putative class members and a sole common question of law, usually involving “institutional practices.” The court then noted that “numerous courts” had “reached the same result in wage and hour cases.”

In light of this latest decision, defendants should consider very carefully the wisdom of challenging class allegations at the pleading stage of a lawsuit. Unless it is plainly evident from the allegations of the complaint that individual issues exists, the challenge to class allegations is more efficiently made at the time of a motion for class certification.

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In a pair of decisions published this month by two separate Districts of the California Court of Appeal, the appellate panels upheld class action settlements and rejected numerous claims asserted by objectors. Both cases demonstrate that, when a class action settlement is well-documented, and the trial court carefully considers the requisite factors, a settlement will be approved as fair, adequate and reasonable.

In Nordstrom Commissions Cases, the class plaintiffs sued Nordstrom in 2004 over its alleged improper policy of paying net sales commissions in violation of the California Labor Code (the actual net sales commissions plan had been approved in a prior class action settlement).  In 2009 the parties reached a settlement in which Nordstrom would pay money, provide merchandise vouchers, and make prospective changes to its calculation, payment and reporting of commissions. After preliminary approval of the settlement by the trial court, an objector contended the settlement was unfair, which objection the trial court found to lack merit. The objector appealed.

After confirming that the role of the appellate court is not to make any independent determination as to whether the settlement terms are fair, adequate and reasonable, but merely to ensure that the trial court acted within its broad discretion, the Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District (Division Three) proceeded to address each of the assertions raised by the objector. The basic theory of the objector was that the plaintiffs' case was strong and not properly considered by the trial court in approving the settlement.

However, the appellate court found that the evidence as to the purported "willfulness" of Nordstrom in its alleged improper commission payment practices was subject to a good faith dispute since, among other things, Nordstrom paid the plaintiffs according to its written commission agreements, the payment plan had been approved in a prior class action settlement, and the Labor Commissioner had refused to find a violation in two different cases raising similar issues. The court also rejected the objector's claims that the trial court had not properly considered the issue of penalties under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (Labor Code Section 2699) and that the settlement was partially funded by in-store merchandise coupons. On the latter claim, the court cited a number of recent appellate decisions where settlements involving coupons or merchandise vouchers were upheld.

In another case involving alleged improper wage practices and violation of the Labor Code, the Second Appellate District (Division Eight) reached the same conclusion that a class settlement was properly approved within the trial court's discretion in Munoz v. BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles.   There, the plaintiffs contended that the defendant has allegedly misclassified production supervisors and merchandising supervisors as exempt employees. After the trial court preliminarily approved that settlement, one person objected, and when the objection was overruled, he appealed the finding of fairness. While asserting a panoply of claims against the settlement, the gist of the objector's claim was that the parties had not provided the trial court with adequate information to make a determination of fairness.

Like the Nordstrom case, this case also involved a prior class action settlement against the defendant, which resolution was used by the parties in support of the current proposed settlement. As such, the appellate court easily found that the trial court had an understanding as to the amount in controversy and the realistic range of outcomes of the litigation, "despite the absence of a statement of the maximum value of all claims." 

As concerns the contention that the parties in this second class action against the defendant had not conducted adequate discovery, the court found that the prior and ample discovery in the first class action, raising the same issues, could be used by the trial court to find that the factual record had been sufficiently developed to satisfy the trial court that the release of the class members' claims was reasonable in light of the strengths and weakness of the case. As such, and after rejecting a number of other issues raised by he objector, the Court of Appeal found there was no abuse of discretion in the trial court's approval of the settlement.

Class action settlements inevitably result in claims by objectors, whether in the form of "professional" objectors or persons who legitimately believe the settlement reached between the parties was "unfair." So long as the parties, in reaching and documenting their settlement, provide the trial court with the requisite data to find that the settlement was fair, adequate and reasonable, it will be the rare case in which appellate review will second-guess the broad discretion provided to trial courts to resolve these types of lawsuits.

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