Seyfarth Shaw LLP | www.seyfarth.com Litigating CA Wage & Hour and Labor Code Class Actions (22nd Edition) 83 Luis Obispo—held that “courts have inherent authority to ensure that PAGA claims can be fairly and efficiently tried and, if necessary, may strike a claim that cannot be rendered manageable.”487 This is because PAGA actions cannot abridge a defendant’s due process right for a “fair and efficient trial of representative claims.” Several federal district courts have adopted or applied Wesson.488 As Wesson cautions, “PAGA claims may well present more significant manageability concerns than those involved in class actions.”489 Generally, a PAGA action may “cover a vast number of employees, each of whom may have markedly different experiences relevant to the alleged violations.”490 In fact, even a single “PAGA claim can cover disparate groups of employees and involve different kinds of violations raising distinct questions.”491 “Under those circumstances, determining whether the employer committed Labor Code violations with respect to each employee may raise practical difficulties and may prove to be unmanageable.”492 In light of these considerations, Wesson concluded that a court is not “powerless to address the challenges presented by large and complex PAGA actions.”493 Nor is the court “bound to hold dozens, hundreds, or thousands of minitrials involving diverse questions, depending on the breadth of the plaintiff's claims.” “Equipped with this tool, courts dealing with representative [PAGA] claims pay close attention to manageability issues and intervene to ensure that the claims can be managed fairly and efficiently at trial.” As Wesson stressed, these inquiries are imperative to “manage litigation with the aim of protecting the parties’ rights and the courts’ ability to function.” Yet, on the other hand is the March 2022 decision in Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc.494 In Estrada, the Fourth District Court of Appeal—which covers the counties of Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Inyo, and Imperial—held that “a court cannot strike a PAGA claim on manageability” and thus “reach[es] the opposition conclusion” of Wesson.495 Estrada relies on differences between PAGA actions and class actions, concluding that “[a]llowing dismissal of unmanageable PAGA claims would effectively graft a class action requirement onto PAGA claims” and “would also interfere with PAGA's purpose as a law enforcement mechanism by placing an extra hurdle on PAGA plaintiffs that is not placed on the state.”496 Despite disagreeing with Wesson, Estrada still gives courts some tools to limit PAGA claims by narrowing the group of employees to only those for whom violations can be proved. According to Estrada, “courts are not powerless when facing unwieldy PAGA claims” because they “may still, where appropriate and within reason, limit the amount of evidence PAGA plaintiffs may introduce at trial to prove alleged violations to other unrepresented 487 Id. at 859. 488 E.g., Feltzs v. Cox Commc'ns Cal., LLC, 2021 WL 4947306, at *4 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 21, 2021) (Selna, J.); Chavez v. Charter Commc'ns, LLC, 2021 WL 6496864, at *3 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 1, 2021) (Staton, J.); Goro v. Flowers Foods, Inc., 2021 WL 5761694, at *5 (S.D. Cal. Dec. 3, 2021) (Robinson, J.). 489 Wesson, 68 Cal. App. 5th at 859-860. 490 Id. at 859. 491 Id. at 860. 492 Id. at 859. 493 Id. at 860. 494 Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc., 76 Cal. App. 5th 685 (2022). 495 Id. at 687. 496 Id.
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