The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has published procedural guidance for parties submitting class action settlements for preliminary and final approval in the Northern District. Details of the Northern District’s procedural guidance for Class Action Settlements may be accessed here.
The new guidance may be a response to the Ninth Circuit’s…
In Jones v. Farmers Ins. Exchange (2013) 221 Cal.App.4th 986 (“Jones”), the California Court of Appeal held that “[t]he lack of an adequate class representative … does not justify the denial of the certification motion. Instead, the trial court must allow Plaintiff[[] an opportunity to amend [his] complaint to name a suitable class representative. …
In a “major blow to multistate class actions,” according to the dissenting opinion in Espinosa v. Ahearn (In re Hyundai & Kia Fuel Econ. Litig.) 2018 U.S.App.LEXIS 1626 (January 23, 2018), the Ninth Circuit vacated a class action settlement after more than six years of litigation. In reaching its decision, the majority found that the …
Governor Jerry Brown of California recently submitted a proposed budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year which contains significant proposed changes to the operation of the Labor & Workforce Development Agency (“LWDA”), the agency responsible for overseeing the Private Attorney Generals Act of 2004 (“PAGA”), including the creation of a “PAGA Unit” with the authority to…
Employers doing business in California have seen a barrage of class actions and representative claims for various alleged wage and hour Labor Code violations. Some cases are premised solely on “technical” wage statement violations, where the employer may not have even realized the practice was occurring or was unlawful.
California’s new law regarding piece-rate compensation…
