through lunch breaks in violation of the California Labor Code and the FLSA. The court previously had granted the plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a collective action, and the defendant subsequently filed a motion to decertify the collective action. In support of conditional certification, the plaintiffs had offered evidence that the defendant ’ s performance metrics pressured workers to underreport their hours and that managers knew about underreported work. The defendant argued that the plaintiffs failed to establish that the defendant had a company-wide policy that systematically undercompensated employees. The court agreed with the defendant. It observed that the evidence reflected an individualized determination regarding whether the employee was pressured to underreport hours based on the individual employee ’ s experience with their supervisor. As a result, the court determined that there would be individual inquiries into each investigator ’ s experiences such that collective-wide treatment would be inappropriate. The court stated that given the defendant ’ s evidence of emails between workers and supervisors, a reasonable jury could determine that the defendant knew or should have known that the plaintiffs did not follow the official company policy, but there was no overarching corporate policy that justified collective action treatment. The court observed that the defendant made efforts to address underreporting issues, including maintaining a policy by which employees were required to report time spent working during breaks or off-the-clock. For these reasons, the court granted the defendant ’ s motion for decertification of the collective action. Importantly, where a plaintiff fails to allege a common policy or practice and presents evidence that he or she is unique, a defendant can leverage those points to prevent class certification. In Willis, et al. v. Koning & Associates , 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43764 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 15, 2023), the plaintiff filed a class and collective action against the defendants alleging violations of federal and state statutes. The plaintiff sought class certification for current and former insurance adjusters employed by the defendants from December 15, 2017, through the date of class certification. As to the numerosity requirement, the court found that there were only 35 putative class members, and this number fell within the gray area between 21 and 40 class members that case law authorities generally require for class certification. The court considered factors such as judicial economy, geographic dispersion, financial resources, ability to file individual suits, and requests for prospective relief, but concluded that numerosity was not satisfied. The court also determined that the plaintiff ’ s misclassification claim required individualized inquiries because of differences in the compensation structure for each class member. As to the plaintiff ’ s mileage reimbursement claims, the court opined that the unique circumstances of the plaintiff ’ s mileage stipend made him an atypical plaintiff, and individualized questions about mileage reimbursement would predominate. As to the plaintiff ’ s meal and rest break claims, the court noted that the plaintiff failed to assert that the defendants had a uniform policy of denying meal and rest breaks. Accordingly, the court held that individualized inquiries would be required to determine compliance with meal and rest break laws. For these reasons, the court concluded that common issues did not predominate over individualized issued and denied the plaintiff ’ s motion for class certification. Conversely, evidence of a common policy presented by an employer prevented class certification as to certain claims in Vvanti, et al. v. O’Reilly Auto Enterprises, LLC, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119459 (C.D. Cal. July 10, 2023). The plaintiff, an hourly retail employee, filed a class action alleging that the defendant violated various provisions of the California Labor Code. The plaintiff filed a motion for class certification, and sought to certify several classes, including a wage statement class, and three meal break classes. The court granted the motion as to the wage statement class and denied it as to the meal break classes. The court concluded that the plaintiff sufficiently alleged that the defendant failed to provide accurate and itemized pay stubs, and that common questions predominated as to those claims. However, as to the meal break claims, the court ruled that the plaintiff failed to put forth significant proof that defendant had a policy of not providing employees with meal breaks, and therefore, the plaintiff failed to meet the commonality requirement. Further, the court stated that the record showed that the defendant did provide meal breaks, and that its time-keeping system automatically paid meal-break premiums if an employee forgot to clock- out for a meal break. For these reasons, the court granted in part and denied in part the plaintiff ’ s motion for class certification.
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© Duane Morris LLP 2024
Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2024
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