In McIntyre v .The Colonies-Pacific, LLC (filed 7/31/14) D065469, at his jewelry store located in defendant’s shopping center, plaintiff McIntyre and his daughter were pistol whipped by two men who restrained them and robbed the store; McIntyre recognized the perpetrators as looking suspicious when they were in the store a week earlier. A few months […]
The fact that commissions earned by employees can both be delayed in payment and distributed in uneven increments creates some challenges. Under Federal law, an employer may attribute commissions to when they are earned (rather than when paid), or to other pay periods, so long as an employee is paid minimum wage in each pay […]
In Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC (filed 6/23/14) S20432, the California Supreme Court majority has delivered a split decision on the question of whether an arbitration agreement that waives a party’s right to bring a representative action on behalf of others is enforceable. Representative actions in the form of class actions brought to […]
In Children’s Hospital Central California v. Blue Cross of California (filed 6/10/14) F065603, Blue Cross, in providing a managed care plan, paid $4.2 million to Children’s Hospital for a 10-month period of coverage without written contract rates for post-stabilization care. Payment was based on the Medi-Cal rates paid by the government. Children’s Hospital sued for […]
In Haver v. BNSF Railway Co. (filed 6/3/14) B246527, Lynn Haver contracted mesothelioma and died as a result of secondary exposure to asbestos. Her former husband was exposed to products and equipment containing asbestos while working for defendant’s predecessor railway company in the 1970’s. Asbestos evidently adhered to his clothing, and then was transferred to […]
In the much-awaited California Supreme Court opinion of Duran v. U.S. Bank National Association (filed 5/29/14) S200923, the state high court answered affirmatively, reversing the judgment. There, loan officers sued for unpaid overtime, claiming they had been misclassified as exempt employees under the outside salesperson exemption, exempting from overtime pay entitlement employees who spend more […]
One lesson I learned from 29 years on the bench was to take care not to say too much when making a ruling. This can be difficult, because conscientious people tend to explain the reasoning behind a conclusion reached. David v. Hernandez (filed 5/22/14) 2d Civil No. B245342 demonstrates the trouble with saying too much. […]
It comes as no surprise that federal and state medical leave statutes authorize eligible employees to take time off to care for ailing family members. Moreover, under both the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) and the California Family Rights Act (“CFRA”) (collectively “family-medical leave”), employees are not required to expressly mention the FMLA […]
In Tiri v. Lucky Chances, Inc. (filed 5/15/14) A136675, Plaintiff Tiri had signed an arbitration agreement with defendant, her employer. Included in the agreement was a provision that the arbitrator, instead of the court, would determine all issues of enforceability of the agreement. Upon her termination, plaintiff sued for wrongful termination, and defendant filed a […]
Last year, we posted an article regarding the January 2013 California Supreme Court decision in Riverisland Cold Storage, Inc. v. Fresno-Madera Production Credit Assn., 55 Cal. 4th 1169 (2013), in which the Court reversed almost 80 years of precedent by ruling that the parol evidence rule exception for fraud allowed use of extrinsic evidence of […]
