Private Attorneys General Act Review – 2023 - Report - Page 22
class, and that both of the plaintiffs were inadequate representatives of the sub-class.
Id. at *46-47.
Obraza, et al. v. Dignity Health, 2022 Cal. Super. LEXIS 46111 (Cal. Super. Ct. June
21, 2022), is an example, however, of how wage and hour claims are often susceptible
to class-wide treatment in California at least in part. The plaintiffs, a group of registered
and licensed nurses, brought a wage and hour class action suit against the defendant
hospitals alleging violations of state labor laws stemming from claims of off-the-clock
work. Id. at *1. The complaint alleged failure to pay regular, overtime, and/or double
time wages, failure to pay all wages upon termination, failure to provide accurate,
itemized wage statements, and unfair business practices under the California Labor
Code and the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). Id. at *2. The defendants’ motion
for summary judgment on the defendants’ “rounding policy” was denied because the
court was not persuaded that this claim had separate and distinct theories from the
overtime claim. Id. at *3. The court then analyzed the plaintiffs’ motion for class
certification. The plaintiffs argued that they could establish off-the-clock work on a classwide basis by comparing records from the timekeeping system with patient records, and
by relying on the plaintiffs’ declarations that they routinely began working before
clocking-in. Id. at *22. The defendants asserted that the plaintiffs’ method of proof was
flawed because many of the timestamps were associated with computer generated
entries (not human entries by workers) and that the audit logs were extremely
burdensome to run and compile because they had to be run individually for each
employee to determine whether they reflected human entries, which posed significant
manageability issues. Id. at *24. Moreover, the defendants established that they had a
policy against working off-the-clock. The court denied certification of the off-the-clock
sub-class because the plaintiffs did not have evidence of a systematic company policy
to pressure or require employees to work off-the-clock, and relying on the timekeeping
and patient records would require individualized analysis. Id. at *35. However, on
allegations that the defendants’ rounding policy for timekeeping violated overtime laws,
the court found that the question of whether the defendants maintained "a consistent
rounding policy that, on average, favors neither overpayment nor underpayment” was
susceptible to class treatment because the plaintiffs could prove their rounding claim
through efficient analysis of the timekeeping system and pay records. Id. at *47. Having
certified the rounding sub-class, the court allowed the derivative waiting time and wage
statement sub-classes to proceed. Id. at *48.
Similarly, in Estrada, et al. v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc., 2022 Cal. App. LEXIS 237 (Cal.
App. 4th Dist. Mar. 23, 2022), the plaintiffs, a group of hourly workers at the defendants’
carpet manufacturing facilities, brought class claims and Private Attorneys General Act
(PAGA) claims primarily based on purported meal and rest break violations. Following a
bench trial and an appeal, the California court of appeal addressed several issues,
including: (i) the defendants’ policy of requiring workers to stay on premises during paid
meal breaks; and (ii) the trial court striking of the PAGA claims based on manageability
concerns. Regarding the meal break question, the defendants had a policy of paying
workers their regular wages during meal periods, but did not give them premium pay for
having to remain on the premises. The defendants argued the on-premises meal policy
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PAGA Litigation Review – 2023
