18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 377 treasurer for the company; and (iii) that she never participated in the day-to-day operations of the company and was not a decision-maker in terms of operational/managerial decisions by White Communications. Under § 558.1, a natural person who is an owner, director, officer, or managing agent of an employer may be personally liable if that person, on behalf of the employer, violates, or causes to be violated certain wage & hour laws as provided in the statute. The trial court granted summary judgment for Shirley. It concluded as a matter of law that she was not liable under § 558.1, because it found undisputed evidence that she did not participate in the determination to classify Plaintiffs as independent contractors. The trial court therefore held that Shirley did not cause any violation of the enumerated sections of the CLC, as set forth in § 558.1 and in Plaintiffs’ operative complaint. On Plaintiffs’ appeal before the California Court of Appeal, it affirmed the trial court’s judgment. The Court of Appeal opined that in interpreting the words “violates, or causes to be violated” in § 558.1, in their ordinary meaning to impose liability on an “owner” such as Shirley if when acting on behalf of an employer, the “owner” must have personal involvement in the enumerated violations in § 558.1. Id . at *2. Absent personal involvement, the owner must have sufficient participation in the activities of the employer such that the “owner” may be deemed to have contributed to, and thus have “caused” such violations. Id . Because the undisputed evidence showed that Shirley was not personally involved in the determination to classify Plaintiffs as independent contractors, which formed the basis of their class allegations, and that she also lacked sufficient participation in the operation and management of White Communications, the Court of Appeal held that there was no triable issue of material fact that she had caused the wage & hour violations. For these reasons, the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgement and held that the trial court’s order granting Shirley summary judgment was proper. Vazquez, et al. v. Jan-Pro Franchising International, Inc., 2021 Cal. LEXIS 1 (Cal. Jan. 14, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of janitorial workers, filed a class action alleging that Defendant misclassified them as independent contractors and thereby violated various provisions of the California Labor Code. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit requested that the California Supreme Court decide the question of whether under California law, the decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, 4 Cal.5th 903 (2018) (“ Dynamex ”), applied retroactively. The Supreme Court answered the question in the affirmative. The Supreme Court noted that since the decision did not establish an entirely new rule, it should be applied retroactively. The Supreme Court explained that the Dynamex ruling made it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors, and that trial courts should apply the tougher standard to weigh pending lawsuits. The Supreme Court observed that Dynamex adopted a three-part ABC test for applying an employee-status standard, which was the longstanding standard utilized in disputes involving classification questions. According to the Dynamex ABC test, a worker is an employee unless the company shows the worker is free from its control, is engaged in a separate line of work, and is in business for oneself. The Supreme Court opined that Dynamix was an authoritative judicial interpretation of language that was used in California’s wage orders for decades to define the scope of the employment relationships governed by the wage orders. Accordingly, the Supreme Court concluded that the Dynamex decision applied retroactively to “all non-final cases that predate the effective date of the Dynamex decision." Id . at *24. Villegas, et al. v. Six Flags Entertainment Corp., 2021 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 4277 (Cal App. 2d Dist. June 29, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of amusement park workers, filed a wage & hour class action in 2013 alleging multiple violations of the California Labor Code as well as a claim under the California Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”). From 2013 to 2016 the parties engaged in discovery. In 2016, Plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification on behalf of a proposed class of over 21,000 current and former seasonal employees. In December of 2016, Plaintiffs moved for leave to amend their class certification motion. At the hearing on the motion, the trial court warned Plaintiffs about the five-year rule and that it was concerned about the clock running on this case, but the trial court extended the briefing schedule for the class certification motion on Plaintiffs’ request. After Defendant filed its opposition, Plaintiffs sought additional time to take depositions and obtained an extension of their deadline to file their reply where the trial court again warned Plaintiffs about the five-year rule. In 2017, the trial court denied certification on the majority of Plaintiffs’ claims, but gave Plaintiffs the opportunity to submit a trial plan demonstrating manageability as to three of the proposed subclasses. In January of 2018, the trial court ultimately denied Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in its entirety. On March 23, 2018, Plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal from the order denying class certification, purporting to appeal under the death knell doctrine. The California Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal on the ground the appeal was taken from a