Seyfarth Shaw LLP | www.seyfarth.com Litigating CA Wage & Hour and Labor Code Class Actions (22nd Edition) 89 the difficulties of managing these types of overreaching actions and will begin to push back, and eventually impose commonsense limitations on discovery sought in support of such claims. XIII. Unfair Competition Claims, Business & Professions Code Section 17200 A. Former Law—Pre-Proposition 64 Beginning in the late 1990s, many plaintiffs in wage and hour cases also filed companion claims under California’s Unfair Competition Law (“UCL“), Business & Professions Code Section 17200, et seq. Before the UCL was amended in 2004, it was an extremely potent weapon because it had no traditional standing requirement. Rather, it literally authorized “any person acting for the interests of itself ... or the general public” to bring an action to enjoin unfair competition. Court decisions gave a generous reading to the term “general public.”528 Moreover, unfair competition was defined as any “unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business practice.” The California Supreme Court construed this language in the disjunctive, so that the UCL was turned into an omnibus consumer protection law, reaching such issues as the sale of whale meat,529 the filing of small claims court lawsuits by a collection agency in counties distant from where the defendants lived,530 the use of the “Joe Camel” caricature to advertise cigarettes,531 marketing sugar coated breakfast cereals as something other than candy,532 and the sale of cigarettes to minors.533 The statute has never, however, permitted damage awards.534 It has authorized only injunctive relief, including, significantly, any order that “may be necessary to restore to any person in interest any money or property ... which may have been acquired by means of such unfair competition”—i.e., restitution. The California Supreme Court held that restitution included ordering an employer who failed to pay premium overtime pay required by statute to disgorge the premium pay to the affected employees,535 an exercise functionally equivalent to paying damages for a statutory overtime claim under the Labor Code. California courts have subsequently clarified, however, that equitable relief does not include forcing the defendant to go beyond 528 A UCL representative action cannot, however, be brought on behalf of sophisticated business entities in their capacities as “consumers” of goods or services. Rosenbluth Int’l, Inc. v. Superior Court, 101 Cal. App. 4th 1073 (2002). 529 People v. Sakai, 56 Cal. App. 3d 531 (1976). 530 Barquis v. Merchants Collection Ass’n, 7 Cal. 3d 94 (1972). 531 Mangini v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 7 Cal. 4th 1057 (1994). 532 Comm. on Children’s Television, Inc. v. Gen. Foods Corp., 35 Cal. 3d 197 (1983). 533 Stop Youth Addiction v. Lucky Stores, Inc., 17 Cal. 4th 553 (1998). 534 The UCL cannot be used, for instance, to recover waiting time penalties, precisely because the damage awards are penalties and not compensation. Pineda v. Bank of Am., N.A., 50 Cal. 4th 1389, 1402 (2010) (“employees have no comparable vested interest in section 203 [waiting time] penalties. We thus hold section 203 [waiting time] penalties cannot be recovered as restitution under the UCL”). The UCL also cannot be used to recover attorney’s fees; these may be recovered only in cases where the UCL is used to “borrow” other laws that specifically provide for recovery of attorney’s fees. People ex rel. City of Santa Monica v. Gabriel, 186 Cal. App. 4th 882, 889 (2010). 535 Cortez v. Purolator Air Filtration Prods. Co., 23 Cal. 4th 163, 177-78 (2000).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTkwMTQ4