18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 403 and the Court denied the motion. In terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood to succeed on the merits, the Court reasoned that Defendants properly acted under their emergency rulemaking power in light of the high number of COVID- 19 cases recorded in California. Plaintiffs contended that Defendants failed to offer substantial evidence in support of their finding of an emergency, but the Court disagreed. It cited to Defendants’ 57-page finding of emergency document containing dozens of citations to scientific studies, reports from federal agencies, and data concerning the spread of COVID-19 in certain workplaces. Id. at *8. Plaintiffs also argued that Defendants’ exceeded their rulemaking authority by regulating workplace safety, and specifically, employee wages. The Court, however, held that the Board was expressly authorized to ensure safe and healthy working conditions, and that for decades the Board had enforced similar regulations impacting employee wages in the context of toxic substance exposures and airborne infectious diseases. Furthermore, the Court rejected Plaintiffs’ due process argument given that they failed to cite one case in support and abandoned this argument in their reply brief. With respect to the balancing interests at stake, the Court held that both the interim harms and the public interest weighed heavily in favor of continued enforcement of the ETS Regulations. The Court noted that the ETS Regulations were temporary measures set to expire in September 2021, and that Plaintiffs overstated the burden placed on employers by these Regulations. For these reasons, the Court denied Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. Orantes, et al. v. Westlake Wellbeing Properties LLC, 2021 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1813 (Cal. App. 2d Dist. March 19, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of housekeepers, brought a putative class action complaint alleging wage & hour violations. Defendant moved to compel arbitration as to Plaintiffs Orantes and Cardona. Both Orantes and Cardona were born outside of the United States and spoke little to no English. When they were hired, Plaintiffs each executed an individual employment contract termed an “EmPact,” which included terms for a mediation and arbitration program given the acronym “C.A.R.E.” Id . at *4. When Orantes was hired someone at work translated the document, which was written in English and gave her a basic description of the document before she signed it. Cardona did not speak or read any English, but her signed contract was in Spanish (which was her primary language). With its motion to compel arbitration, Defendant submitted unsigned EmPact booklets that contained the arbitration provisions and signed, one-page EmPact forms for both Orantes and Cardona. Orantes and Cardona acknowledged that they signed the one-page EmPact forms, but denied they had seen the larger EmPact booklet or that they were told about the document’s arbitration provisions. The trial court determined that the arbitration agreements were unenforceable due to fraud in the execution in Orantes’ case and uncertain terms in Cardona’s case. The trial court found that Orantes did not manifest her consent to arbitration because the one-page EmPact form she signed was in English, and she relied on a description of the document by Defendant that did not mention arbitration. Although Cardona was able to read the one-page EmPact form she signed, the trial court ruled this form, standing alone, did not create an enforceable agreement to arbitrate because there was no evidence that she ever received the unsigned EmPact booklet and, standing alone, the signed one-page EmPact form was no more than an “agreement to agree.” Id . at *7. Alternatively, the trial court held that the purported agreements were unconscionable. On Defendant’s appeal, the California Court of Appeal held that the trial court correctly determined that Orantes and Cardona did not enter into enforceable agreements to arbitrate their claims. The Court of Appeal determined that as to Orantes, the agreement was unenforceable because of fraud in the execution. It opined that the trial court properly found that the description of the one-page EmPact form that did not mention arbitration, provided to Orantes in English, a language that Defendant’s managers knew she did not understand, was properly analyzed as fraud in the execution of the agreement. As to Cardona, the Court of Appeal agreed that there was a lack of certainty regarding a promise to arbitrate pursuant to the procedure described in C.A.R.E. because the one-page EmPact form did not define C.A.R.E. and did not incorporate any other document by reference. Because the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s order denying Defendant’s motion to compel on these grounds, it did not address the trial court’s alternative holding that the purported agreements were unconscionable. Parada, et al. v. East Coast Transportation, 2021 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 2005 (Cal. App. 2d Dist. March 26, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of truck drivers, filed a class action alleging that Defendant misclassified them as independent contractors and thereby violated various provisions of the California Labor Law. The trial court ruled that Plaintiffs were independent contractors rather than employees. It found that the California Supreme Court’s decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court , 4 Cal.5th 903 (2018), did not apply retroactively to Plaintiffs’ claims. After the trial court’s ruling, the California Supreme Court decided in