Alcantar v. Hobart Service, No. 13-55400 (9th Cir. 2015)
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Plaintiffs, seeking to represent a class of service technicians, filed suit against his employer, Hobart, and its parent company, ITW, alleging that Hobart did not compensate its technicians for the time they spent commuting in Hobart’s service vehicles from their homes to their job sites and from those job sites back home, and that Hobart failed to provide its technicians with meal and rest breaks. The district court denied the class certification and granted partial summary judgment to defendants. The district court also determined that plaintiff did not comply with the notice requirements of California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), Cal. Lab. Code 2698 et seq. The court concluded that the district court erred in denying class
certification because it evaluated the merits rather than focusing on whether the questions presented - meritorious or not - were common to the class; the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the proposed class failed to meet the requirements of Rule 23(b) because questions as to why service technicians missed their meal and rest breaks would predominate over questions common to the class; in regard to plaintiff's commute-time claim, the court concluded that there was a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Hobart requires technicians to use its vehicles for their commute; and the district court properly dismissed the PAGA claim because plaintiff's letter is insufficient to allow the Labor and Workforce Development Agency to intelligently assess the seriousness of the alleged violations. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
Court Description: Labor Law / Class Certification. The panel affirmed in part, and reversed and remanded in part, the district court’s orders denying class certification and granting partial summary judgment in an action brought by a putative class of service technicians, alleging violations of California Labor Code § 1194 and derivative claims under California’s Unfair Competition Law and Private Attorney General Act. The district court denied plaintiff’s motion for class certification because plaintiff failed to satisfy the commonality requirement of Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2) and the predominance requirement of Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(3). Addressing the commonality requirement and plaintiffs’ commute-time claim, the panel held that the district court erred in denying class certification because it evaluated the merits rather than focusing on whether the questions presented – meritorious or not – were common to the class. Addressing the predominance requirement and plaintiff’s meal- and rest-break claim, the panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the proposed class failed under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b), where the district court held that questions as to why service technicians missed their meal and rest breaks would predominate over questions common to the class. ALCANTAR V. HOBART SERVICE 3 The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the employer on plaintiff’s commute-time claim because there was a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether technicians were required to commute in the employer’s vehicles. The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the employer on plaintiff’s Private Attorney General Act claim because the letter in which plaintiff disclosed his allegations against the employer did not contain sufficient facts to comply with the statute’s notice requirements. Judge N.R. Smith concurred in the majority’s rejection of plaintiff’s contentions regarding the denial of class certification on his meal break claim and the grant of summary judgment to the employer on his Private Attorney General Act claim. Judge N.R. Smith dissented in part, and would hold there is no genuine issue of material fact on the commute time claim, and he would not remand the case.
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