Justia California Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff filed suit against CSU, his former employer, alleging that CSU discriminated against him based on his national origin when it denied his application for a tenured faculty position and consequently terminated him. CSU moved to strike the complaint under Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16, the anti-SLAPP statute. The trial court denied the motion. The court concluded that, under the circumstances, the gravamen of the complaint arises from protected activity. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded with directions to the trial court to determine whether plaintiff demonstrated a reasonable probability of prevailing on the merits of his claims. View "Park v. Bd. of Trustees of CA State Univ." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs Michael Parnow, Shawn Lisenby, Bob Andrade, Gabriel Bautista, and Saiyaz Abdul filed a class action against Universal Protection Service, LP and Universal Services of America, Inc. (collectively, UPS). Plaintiffs worked as armed security guards at the Yolo County Superior Court, under the employ of UPS. As part of their job, they have to provide equipment, such as guns, handcuffs, and radios, and have to pay the costs to maintain their certification to work as armed guards, but they are not reimbursed for equipment or training costs. When they filed an administrative complaint, they were all fired except plaintiff Lisenby, and none were paid their wages. The trial court granted a stipulated stay, pending the outcome of a then-pending case in the California Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court issued its decision, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint as a “representative action” under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) and also petitioned to compel class-wide arbitration. The agreement listed a number of disputes that were covered, including “any state or local statutes and ordinances relating to wage and hour or wage payment matters.” It excluded employees covered by collective bargaining agreements, and disputes involving workers compensation and unemployment insurance. UPS answered with a general denial, coupled with various affirmative defenses, including that the class action claims were barred by the arbitration agreement. UPS also filed a cross-complaint seeking a declaration that: (1) the trial court, not the arbitrator, should decide whether class action relief was barred by the arbitration agreement; and (2) that the arbitration agreement barred class actions. After plaintiffs answered the cross-complaint, UPS moved to compel individual arbitration and stay the proceedings. Plaintiffs opposed the motion, in part arguing that under American Arbitration Association (AAA) Rules, whether class arbitrations were permitted was a matter for the arbitrator to decide. Plaintiffs obtained judicial notice of the AAA Rules. The trial court denied the motion to compel individual arbitration, and stayed the suit pending the arbitration. UPS petitioned for a writ of mandate, seeking to set aside the order compelling it to submit to arbitration. Upon review, the Court of Appeal concluded that the agreements’ incorporation by reference of the AAA Rules vested the arbitrator with the power to decide the disputed issue. The alternative writ was discharged, the stay (issued previously) was vacated, and the petition for mandate was denied. View "Universal Protection Service v. Super. Ct." on Justia Law

Plaintiff-appellant Christopher J. Warner served as a municipal and then superior court judge from July 1996 until his retirement in October 2010. In November 2010, he applied for a disability retirement benefit under the Judges' Retirement System II Law (JRS II). Defendant-respondent California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) granted his application, and he was awarded a monthly retirement allowance, paying him an amount equal to 65 percent of his retirement-level salary. In May 2011, Judge Warner applied to CalPERS to receive a distribution of his monetary credits in the JRS II system, which totaled $572,407. CalPERS staff denied the request. Judge Warner appealed that decision to the CalPERS Board of Administration. After a hearing, the administrative law judge (ALJ) issued a proposed decision recommending the staff decision be affirmed. The Board adopted the ALJ's recommendation. In January 2013, Judge Warner filed a petition for writ of mandate in San Bernardino County Superior Court challenging the Board's decision. The Judicial Council assigned the case to Los Angeles County Superior Court, which later an order denying the petition. This appeal presented a matter of first impression for the Court of Appeal: a question of statutory interpretation regarding the JRS II. Judge Warner contended that under JRS II, he was entitled to receive both a disability retirement allowance and payment of the monetary credits he accrued during his service. CalPERS ruled JRS II entitles Judge Warner only to the disability retirement allowance. The trial court denied Judge Warner's petition for writ of mandate, which sought to reverse the agency's ruling. Finding no reversible error in the Superior Court's judgment, the Court of Appeal affirmed. View "Warner v. CalPERS" on Justia Law

Carlson sued Home Team, alleging that she was employed as Home’s office manager from February 4, 2013, until her wrongful termination on July 1, 2013. Carlson sought damages for wrongful termination, harassment, breach of her employment agreement, unpaid overtime, retaliation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Home moved to compel arbitration, because on Carlson’s first day of work, she was directed to Home’s electronic “onboarding system,” which contained company policies, including Home’s Agreement to Arbitrate. Carlson objected to the Agreement in an email, stating: “I would like to negotiate the terms.” In a conference call with Home’s human resources manager, Carlson asked who would pay for any arbitration and what firm would perform it. The HR Manager began to explain, but Carlson “cut [her] off,” saying that was all the information she needed and she would sign the Agreement. Home’s in-house counsel produced a copy of the Agreement that Carlson “signed electronically,” which was kept in her personnel file.The trial court denied Home’s motion. The court of appeal affirmed, finding the arbitration agreement procedurally and substantively unconscionable, and rejecting contentions that state law unconscionability principles are preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. 1, and that the courts could sever unconscionable provisions. View "Carlson v. Home Team Pest Defense, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, truck drivers for Seacon, filed suit under Labor Code section 2802 for the reimbursement of paycheck deductions, contending that they should have been classified as employees, not independent contractors. The trial court entered judgment in favor of plaintiffs and awarded damages for specified paycheck deductions. The court concluded that substantial evidence proves that Seacon effectively controlled the manner and means of respondents’ work. Further, substantial evidence proves that the balance of the secondary factors, like the primary factor of control, supports the finding that plaintiffs were employees, not independent contractors. The court also concluded that Seacon forfeited its challenge to the damages award by failing to raise the issue in the trial court and by failing in its appellate briefing to provide the court with any citation to legal authority that supports its position. View "Garcia v. Seacon Logix" on Justia Law

In February 2011, the 51-year-old decedent Gregory Thompson was working at High Desert State Prison in Susanville as a guard. An inmate stabbed him eight times in the neck, shoulder, and arm. This resulted in a stipulated award of a 44 percent permanent disability to his neck and psyche. As a result of his injuries, he accepted a medical demotion to an entry-level computer analyst position in December 2012 in the information technology department of the prison’s medical unit, forfeiting his peace officer status. He had a troubled relationship with his supervisor, who told him he was not passing probation. In March 2013, he committed suicide by means of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (WCAB) issued an opinion after the grant of a motion for reconsideration of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The WCAB opinion upheld the finding of its hearing officer that there was an industrial cause for Thompson's death, and the award of a workers’ compensation death benefit to his widow Svetlana Thompson. The Department sought a writ of review challenging the failure of the WCAB to address its claim that the hearing officer failed to adjudicate the widow’s petition to determine her entitlement to special death benefits under the public employees’ retirement system (PERS). A member of PERS who was a peace officer qualified for a special death benefit paid to a surviving spouse if the death was industrial. A surviving dependent is precluded from seeking the workers’ compensation death benefit in lieu of the PERS special death benefit. The Court of Appeal reversed, finding that the WCAB’s opinion included the necessary finding that the testimonial and medical evidence lead inevitably to the conclusion that decedent’s suicide was the result of injury to his psyche arising from an industrial cause (rejecting any causal effect from posited nonindustrial intervening circumstances), even if this was not in the technical form that the WCAB prescribed for a finding of fact pursuant to Government Code section 21537. As a result of the WCAB’s "insouciant deferral of the computation issue to the PERS Board, its order awarding the full workers’ compensation death benefit to the widow—without crediting the PERS special death benefit against it" was unauthorized under Labor Code section 4707. View "Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation v. WCAB" on Justia Law

Z.V., then 15 years old and in foster care, was sexually assaulted by Riverside County social worker Birdsong in September 2009. Z.V. sought to hold Birdsong’s employer, Riverside County, responsible for the assault under the doctrine of respondeat superior. The trial court rejected the theory. The court of appeal affirmed, noting that Birdsong was not Z.V.’s assigned social worker, he merely volunteered to transport Z.V. to a new foster home at the end of the workday. The sexual assault took place after 8:30 at night, several hours after Birdsong’s shift would have normally finished, and after he had already completed the task of delivering Z.V. to the new home without incident. It was several hours after the delivery that Birdsong went back to pick up Z.V. under the pretext of building “rapport,” took him to a liquor store and then to Birdsong’s own apartment, where the attack took place. View "Z.V. v. County of Riverside" on Justia Law

After CDCR served a notice of rejection on Joseph McCauley to remove him from the position of Correctional Sergeant, McCauley filed an administrative appeal to the Board. The Board agreed with McCauley that CDCR’s notice of rejection and other papers were invalid due to failure to comply with certain timing and notice requirements relating directly to the duration of the probationary period, and the Board revoked CDCR's notice of rejection. CDCR then challenged the Board's ruling by filing a petition for writ of mandate, which the trial court granted. McCauley appealed. The court held that McCauley is correct that the notice of rejection was fatally deficient under applicable law because the effective date of the rejection was after the completion of his probationary period. In so holding, the court also concluded that the proper way to calculate a civil service probationary period is to include the first day, notwithstanding the general rule for calculating time limits in Government Code section 68001 and Code of Civil Procedure section 12. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment of the trial court. View "CA Dept. of Corr. & Rehab. v. CA St. Personnel Bd." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed from an order denying certification of a class of approximately 26,000 nonexempt California current and former employees of Chipotle regarding what plaintiffs allege, among other things, is Chipotle‘s policy to require employees to purchase slip-resistant shoes from a vendor, Shoes for Crews, in order to work at Chipotle‘s restaurants. The court concluded that the trial court‘s order denying plaintiffs‘ class certification motion and granting Chipotle‘s motion to deny class certification is a nonappealable order because the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004, Lab. Code, 2698 et seq., claims remain in the trial court and the "death knell" doctrine does not apply under these circumstances. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal. View "Munoz v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc." on Justia Law

Former employees brought a putative class action against their former employer, NMG, alleging violations of the California Labor Code, and NMG moved to compel arbitration under its mandatory arbitration program for employment-related disputes. NMG submitted evidence that, at the time of plaintiff’s employment (2007-2009), it distributed to each new employee a copy of its “Mandatory Arbitration Agreement,” brochures explaining the arbitration program, and an employee handbook that included a brief description of the program The trial court initially ordered arbitration of all claims except a claim under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) Lab. Code, 2698, but later reconsidered and denied the motion, concluding the arbitration agreement at issue was illusory. The court of appeal affirmed, rejecting arguments that the court lacked jurisdiction to reconsider its initial order; an arbitrator, rather than a court, must determine any challenges to the enforceability of the arbitration agreement; and the arbitration agreement is enforceable and encompasses all claims, including his PAGA claim. The court found multiple unconscionable aspects to the NMG Arbitration Agreement. View "Pinela v. Neiman Marcus Group, Inc." on Justia Law