California Legal Brief

The Rule of Stoker v. Blue Origin is that an arbitration agreement containing multiple unconscionable provisions — including overbroad scope beyond employment, lack of mutuality favoring employer, predispute jury trial waiver, and blanket representative action waiver — cannot be enforced and severance is inappropriate where the defects indicate systematic effort to secure an unfairly advantageous forum, under circumstances where the employer imposed the adhesive agreement as a condition of employment.

The Rule of **Santana v. Studebaker Health Care Center** is that ambiguities in multiple arbitration-related documents signed simultaneously do not negate a valid agreement to arbitrate employment disputes where the parties' intent to arbitrate is clear from the overall terms, under circumstances where the documents contain minor conflicts regarding procedural matters like arbitrator selection but consistently reflect mutual agreement to resolve employment-related disputes through binding arbitration.

The Rule of Aerni is that section 1940.1 does not require individualized proof that each class member used the hotel as their primary residence; rather, whether a hotel is "residential" is a hotel-wide inquiry based on the character and intended/actual use of the hotel as a whole, under circumstances where plaintiffs seek class certification for claims alleging the "28-day shuffle" practice at residential hotels.

The Rule of Jazmin Ayala-Ventura v. The Superior Court of Fresno County is that an employment arbitration agreement with potentially broad scope and indefinite duration is not substantively unconscionable when the employer's limited business operations restrict the realistic range of non-employment claims that could arise, under circumstances where the agreement provides mutual arbitration obligations, neutral arbitration procedures, and accessible dispute resolution terms.

The Rule of Bartholomew v. Parking Concepts, Inc. is that collecting and using license plate information through an automated system without implementing and making publicly available the statutorily required usage and privacy policy constitutes "harm" under the ALPR Law sufficient to state a cause of action, under circumstances where an entity operates cameras and computer algorithms to automatically read and convert license plate images into computer-readable data.

The Rule of The Merchant of Tennis is that when employers obtain individual settlement agreements from putative class members through fraud or misrepresentation, a curative notice must inform those employees that rescinding their agreements to join the class action may require repayment of settlement funds at the conclusion of litigation, under Civil Code sections 1689, 1691, and 1693, even though the trial court retains discretion to adjust equities between the parties at judgment.

The Rule of Melissa I. Aerni et al. v. RR San Dimas, L.P., et al. is that Civil Code section 1940.1 does not require individualized proof that each plaintiff used a residential hotel as their own primary residence, under circumstances where plaintiffs seek class certification for violations of the statute's prohibition against the "28-day shuffle."

The Rule of The Merchant of Tennis is that when putative class members rescind individual settlement agreements obtained through fraud or duress to join a class action lawsuit, they must be notified in the curative notice that they could be responsible for repayment of settlement consideration at the conclusion of litigation pursuant to Civil Code sections 1689, 1691, and 1693, under circumstances where an employer has obtained nearly 1,000 individual settlement agreements from employees during pending class certification proceedings through misrepresentations about the litigation.

The Rule of Martinez v. Sierra Lifestar, Inc. is that a defendant's argument that bonuses were discretionary or in the nature of gifts does not defeat typicality of a class representative's wage and hour claims when the same argument applies to identical bonuses paid to other class members, under circumstances where the employer used a uniform practice of excluding all such bonuses from regular rate of pay calculations.

The Rule of Vela v. Harbor Rail Services is that a railcar repairman who repairs decommissioned freight cars withdrawn from service at a railroad yard is not a "railroad employee" or "transportation worker" exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, under circumstances where the worker is employed by an independent contractor company, has no direct employment relationship with the railroad, and performs repair work on rail cars that are temporarily out of service and not actively engaged in transporting goods.

The Rule of Robert Toothman v. Redwood Toxicology Laboratory, Inc. is that a nonsignatory employer cannot compel arbitration under a temporary employment agency's arbitration agreement when the employee's claims arise exclusively from direct employment with the nonsignatory employer that occurred after the agency employment ended, under circumstances where the arbitration agreement defines "Company" to include only the agency and its affiliates, subsidiaries and parent companies, and the claims do not arise out of or relate to employment with the temporary agency.