Private Attorneys General Act Review – 2023 - Report - Page 10
Recently, rather than wait for guidance from the California Supreme Court, two state
courts jumped the gun and issued rulings on issues that are supposed to be addressed
by Adolph. In Galarsa v. Dolgen California, LLC and Piplack v. In-N-Out Burgers, two
California Courts of Appeals rejected the argument that a PAGA plaintiff lacks standing
to pursue a representative action after a court compels his or her individual claim to
arbitration. Before these decisions, California trial courts typically stayed the
representative PAGA claims after compelling individual PAGA claims to arbitration,
instead of dismissing as Viking River directed, but these decisions now call this
conservative approach into question, inserting even more uncertainty.
This Private Attorney General Act Litigation Review offers an overview of the most
significant trends and developments that shaped the PAGA landscape in 2022 and early
2023, analyzing the numbers, the key PAGA-related decisions on issues such as
arbitration, preemption, manageability, and the interplay of PAGA and class and
collective action theories of liability.
A.
The Explosion Of PAGA Notices
According to data maintained by the California Department of Industrial Relations,
the number of PAGA notices filed with the LWDA has increased exponentially over
the past two decades. The number grew from 11 notices in 2006 to 1,743 in 2011,
to 5,208 in 2016, and to 6,502 in 2021. From 2013 to 2014, employers saw the
largest single year increase, from 1,605 notices in 2013 to 4,532 notices in 2014,
an increase of 182%. Over the five-year period from 2017 to 2021, the number of
notices grew from 4,985 in 2017, to 6,502 in 2021, an increase of 30%.
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© Duane Morris LLP 2023
PAGA Litigation Review – 2023
