Labor Employment Law Blog

On April 16, 2008, a California Appellate Court decided Bradstreet v. Wong, holding that the shareholders, officers, or managing agents of the Employers could not be held personally liable for violations of the Labor Code arising out of the Employers' failure to pay wages.  The Court also held that individual defendants were not required to pay earned but unpaid wages as restitution under California's Unfair Competition Law.

The Department of Labor has released a new required poster regarding two recently created types of military family leave.  On January 28, 2008, President Bush signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 ("NDAA").  The NDAA amends the Family and Medical Leave Act (the "FMLA") by creating two new categories of military family leave.  Section 585(a) of the NDAA provides for a 12 week "qualifying exigency" leave and a 26 week military caregiver leave.

On April 1, 2008, in Metters v. Ralphs Grocery Co., the California Appellate Court provided guidance on what constitutes an enforceable arbitration agreement.  Samuel Metters was an employee alleging racial discrimination and harassment against his employer, Ralphs Grocery.  He claimed that a resolution dispute form with a binding arbitration clause was not an enforceable contract, despite his having signed it.  The Court agreed.

For the last fifteen years, issues of hours worked for “resident employees” in California have been guided by the California Appellate Court’s findings in Brewer v. Patel.  In that case, involving a motel clerk required to live on the premises, “the appellate court affirmed…that [Brewer] was entitled to be paid only for the time he actually worked, not for all the time he spent at the motel.”  The trial court’s findings were supported by a “special rule” in the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) Manual (§ 11050, subdivision (2)(K)) that allowed managers and clerks who were required to live on the work premises to count only the “time spent carrying out assigned duties…as hours worked.”

If your company has significant FMLA issues (such as a large percentage of employees certified for intermittent leave), you should be paying attention to the proposed changes to the FMLA regulations. One major change that should be supported is the right to require recertification every 30 days for long-term chronic conditions where there are reasonable safety concerns and intermittent leave has been used during the 30-day period. Comments on the proposed regulations are due by April 11.

A decade ago, in Reno v. Baird, the California Supreme Court held that individual employees could not be held personally liable for discrimination under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.  Until this past week, however, the law regarding whether individual employees could be held liable for retaliation was unsettled.  In Jones v. The Lodge at Torrey Pines Partnership, the Supreme Court of California clarified that, as in discrimination cases, only employers and not individual employees can be held liable for retaliation.

On February 20, 2008, in an 8-1 decision, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Preston v. Ferrer, holding that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) supersedes state laws that would make administrative agencies the first stop for determining issues arising under an FAA-governed contract. In other words, when parties agree to arbitrate disputes arising under an FAA-governed contract, no state can require them to submit their contract-based dispute to a government agency instead of arbitration.

On February 20, 2008, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of LaRue v DeWolff, Boberg & Associates, Inc., unanimously holding that individual participants in defined contribution plans regulated by ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) can sue their plan administrator for a breach of fiduciary duty that reduces the value of their individual account.

On December 3, 2007, we reported that the California Supreme Court granted Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton's Petition for Review on behalf of Defendants Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and Golden Eagle Insurance Corporation in one of the biggest employment class action cases pending in California today.  When considering the Liberty Mutual case, the California Supreme Court may address several significant legal issues relating to the interpretation of the California Wage Orders, in particular the "administrative exemption" to California's overtime requirements.

On January 28, 2008, President Bush signed an amendment to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that extended greater protections to military families.  The amendment (H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 (NDAA), Pub. L. 110-181) allows an employee to take up to 26 workweeks of leave to care for an injured or ill member of that employee's immediate family who is a “covered service member” in the military.  The NDAA also permits an employee to take 12 weeks of FMLA leave for "any qualifying exigency" arising out of the fact that an immediate family member in the military is on active duty or has been notified of an impending call or order to active duty in support of a contingency operation.