Litigation is a game of cat and mouse

Your HR professional will inevitably tell you that the law is always changing. That’s true. But from my vantage point as a lawyer, the most interesting thing is that legal strategy is likewise changing. It used to be that an employer might face a class action for wage/hour violations. In the last 10-15 years, we started training heavily on the use of Arbitration Agreements as an effective tool to dissolve the class case and turn it into an individual Arbitration. Then came along the Private Attorneys’ General Act in 2004 which, unlike the traditional class case, could not be compelled into Arbitration since Plaintiff stands in the shoes of the State. So, employers pushed the idea of forcing individual PAGA standing into Arbitration and were successful. The Plaintiff’s bar then started filing “headless” PAGA claims where the representative Plaintiff chose not to bring individual claims to avoid being compelled into individual Arbitration. Now that is up before the California Supreme Court in Leeper v. Shipt, Inc.

California Courts – Appellate Court Case Information

How do you win? The smart play is making sure that you have an annual payroll compliance audit. We can help.