18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 449 jurisdiction provision. Id . at *4. The Court found that the home state exception applied, and granted the motion to remand. The Court previously had allowed limited jurisdictional discovery on the issue of whether the exemption applied. Defendant produced information regarding addresses and drivers’ license information for 463,496 drivers. Id . at *6. Approximately 375,044 drivers, or 80.92%, provided a California address, 67,443 or 14.55% provided no address; and 21,009, or 4.53% provided an address outside California. Id . at *7. Defendant also represented that there were “441,311 DoorDash accounts associated with Dashers who (i) have made at least one delivery in California since March 1, 2020, and (ii) have never performed a delivery on the DoorDash platform outside California." Id . Further, Plaintiff offered evidence from discovery that 91% of the "individuals identified by Defendant as class members and matched with background check data had a California Driver’s license." Id . The Court held that the evidence demonstrated that well over two-thirds of the delivery drivers during the class period signed up for an account with a California address, never made a delivery outside of California, and had California drivers’ licenses. The Court reasoned that this evidence was sufficient to meet the home exemption requirement of the CAFA. The Court thus determined that remand was proper, and it granted Plaintiff’s motion. (x) Tenth Circuit Garitano, et al. v. Chick-Fil-A, Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16067 (D. Colo. Jan. 28, 2021). Plaintiff filed a class action alleging that Defendant did not provide Plaintiff and other non-exempt employees the required 10- minute rest period for every four hours of work and 30-minute meal breaks for shifts exceeding five hours in violation of the Colorado Minimum Wage Act and the Colorado Wage Claim Act. Defendant removed the action on the basis of jurisdiction under the CAFA. Plaintiff argued that Defendant’s removal was untimely because, under 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b)(1), Defendant must remove a case within 30 days after service of the complaint. Plaintiff thus moved to remand and the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion. Id . at *8. First, the Court acknowledged that the 30-day removal period applies to cases removed under the CAFA. However, the Court noted that “there is an ‘escape hatch’ to the 30-day deadline for removal,” since even though a case may not be initially removable, a notice of removal may be filed within 30 days after receipt by Defendant, through service or otherwise, of a copy of an amended pleading, motion, order or other paper from which it may be ascertained that the case was one which has become removable. Id. at *3. Defendant argued that because Plaintiff’s state court complaint contained no information regarding the amount of damages she was seeking either on her own behalf or on behalf of the putative class, it was not clear that the case was removable until Defendant understood, after multiple calls with Plaintiff’s counsel, that Plaintiff sought to pursue relief for a broad class. Id. at *3-4. The Court accepted Defendant’s argument. It held that the initial pleading did not contain a clear and unequivocal basis for Defendant to ascertain removability, and did not trigger the 30-day clock. For these reasons, the Court rejected the notion that the removal was untimely. Id. at *7. Accordingly, the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion to remand. Id. at *8. (xi) Eleventh Circuit Smith, et al. v. Marcus & Millichap, Inc., 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 7290 (11th Cir. March 12, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of nursing home residents, filed a class action against Defendants asserting causes of action for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duties, civil conspiracy, and civil remedies for criminal practices under Florida law. Specifically, Plaintiffs claimed that Defendant Michael Bokor, the president of the company responsible for managing the nursing facilities at issue, fraudulently obtained licenses to operate nursing homes in Florida while withholding key information regarding the facilities’ common ownership and management. Id. at *8. Plaintiffs further claimed that Defendant Marcus & Millichap, Inc. (“MMI”), a real estate brokerage firm, marketed these nursing facilities with knowledge of their illegal licenses. As a result of Defendants’ allegedly improper practices, Plaintiffs asserted that they suffered substandard levels of care on a daily basis. Id. at *9. Shortly after Plaintiffs filed this action in Florida state court, Defendants removed the action pursuant to the CAFA. Plaintiffs subsequently filed a motion to remand based on the CAFA’s local controversy and discretionary exceptions. The District Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion, and Defendants appealed. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the District Court’s order. The Eleventh Circuit considered Plaintiffs’ argument for remand under the local controversy exception, which provides that a District Court shall not exercise jurisdiction over a class action where more than two-thirds of the members of the putative class and at least one significant Defendant are citizens of the state in which the action was filed. Id. at *5. In an effort to establish the citizenship requirement