Seyfarth Shaw LLP | www.seyfarth.com Litigating CA Wage & Hour Class and PAGA Actions (24th Edition) 101 Simply parroting legal conclusions in a notice, without providing sufficient factual allegations or theories of liability, does not satisfy the administrative remedy requirement, because it fails to provide the LWDA a meaningful opportunity to assess alleged violations for possible enforcement action or provide adequate notice to employers.495 In Brown v. Ralphs Grocery Co.,496 the Court of Appeal analyzed whether a plaintiff’s LWDA notice sufficiently pleaded “facts and theories” to support the violations claimed. The plaintiff alleged she and other aggrieved employees “did not take all meal and rest periods and were not properly compensated for missed meal and rest periods” in violation of sections 226.7 and 512.497 She claimed defendants “failed to pay [her] and other aggrieved employees all wages due to them within any time period specified by California Labor Code section 204.”498 The plaintiff alleged that defendants “did not provide [her] and other aggrieved employees with proper itemized wage statements” as required by section 226, subdivision (a), including by failing “to include the name and address of the legal entity that is the employer.”499 The Brown court held that plaintiff’s LWDA notice was deficient as to all alleged violations, with the exception of the facts provided to support the Section 226 wage statement claim. Brown stated that the notice “was a string of legal conclusions that parroted the allegedly violated Labor Code provisions. It did not state facts and theories supporting the alleged violations not implied by reference to the Labor Code.”500 The notice therefore did not give “sufficient information for the LWDA to assess the seriousness of the alleged violations and decide whether to allocate scarce resources to an investigation, or for defendants to determine what policies or practices were being complained of, have an opportunity to cure the violations, and prepare a meaningful response.”501 Thus, Brown concluded that part of the LWDA notice was inadequate and that standing to pursue PAGA remedies. … In this sense, we find the fact that Johnson's claim is time-barred places her in a similar situation as a plaintiff who settles her individual claims or dismisses her individual claims to pursue a stand-alone PAGA claim.”). However, the 2024 revisions to the PAGA statute now expressly require the named plaintiff to have experienced the Labor Code violations they are pursuing within the one-year limitations period. Lab. Code § 2699(c)(1). 495 Alcantar v. Hobart Service, 800 F.3d 1047, 1057 (9th Cir. 2015) (affirming summary judgment on PAGA claim where plaintiff’s notice to LWDA contained only legal conclusions); Archila v. KFC U.S. Properties, Inc., 420 Fed. App’x 667, 669 (9th. Cir. 2011) (letter that “merely lists several California Labor Code provisions” that the plaintiff alleged the defendant violated was insufficient); Gunn v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc., 2016 WL 7030363, at *4 (S.D. Cal. Dec. 2, 2016) (“Factual details implied by the labor code violations are not sufficient to meet PAGA's notice requirement [and] Plaintiff was required to state the ‘facts and theories’ supporting his alleged violations.”); Soto v. Castlerock Farming & Transp., Inc., 2012 WL 1292519, at *7-8 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 16, 2012) (holding PAGA letter to be inadequate to exhaust administrative remedies because it failed to provide “an exceedingly detailed level of specificity” as to the facts and theories to support the alleged violations); but see Brown v. Cinemark, 705 Fed. App’x 604 (9th Cir. 2017) (stating, while reversing trial court’s ruling that PAGA letter was insufficiently specific: Plaintiff’s “PAGA letter pleaded facts and theories sufficient to put Defendants and the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency on notice for potential investigation, which satisfies the policy goal of California Labor Code § 2699.3(a)”). 496 Brown v. Ralphs Grocery Co., 28 Cal. App. 5th 824, 837 (2018). 497 Id. 498 Id. 499 Id. 500 Id. 501 Id. at 837-38.
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