California Legal Brief

The Rule of Department of Human Resources v. California Correctional Peace Officers Association is that an arbitrator does not exceed their powers by issuing an award that offsets an SPB-approved disciplinary suspension when the award is based on violations of the Dills Act and MOU protections for union activity, under circumstances where the SPB reviewed the disciplinary action for cause under the Civil Service Act while the arbitrator separately reviewed whether the same discipline constituted unlawful retaliation for protected activities.

The Rule of Cardenas v. Los Angeles Unified School District is that appellate arguments are forfeited when the opening brief cites only to trial court briefing that itself contains no record citations, under circumstances where the appellate brief fails to provide direct citations to record evidence supporting factual assertions.

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 Chang v. Southern California Permanente Medical Group is that the "going and coming rule" applies to hybrid workers when they are commuting to their office on scheduled in-office days, even if they sometimes work from home, under circumstances where the employee's home is not a worksite on the day of the accident and the employee is engaged in an ordinary commute to their primary workplace.

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 Cleare v. Superior Court is that a school district cannot invoke the impossibility doctrine to excuse non-compliance with statutory teacher credentialing requirements until it has exhausted all available statutory remedies including seeking waivers from the Commission on Teaching Credentialing or State Board of Education, under circumstances where the district uses long-term substitutes beyond statutory limits instead of permanent credentialed teachers.

The Rule of Pechkis v. Trustees of the California State University is that an anti-SLAPP motion to strike entire causes of action fails when the defendant does not identify with specificity how each claim underlying the causes of action arises from protected activity, under circumstances where the causes of action contain both protected and unprotected conduct.

The Rule of Guardian Storage Centers, LLC is that attorneys must comply with State Fund obligations when they receive attorney-client privileged materials that were impermissibly taken from the privilege holder without authorization, even when the materials were originally sent to the disclosing person in their corporate capacity, under circumstances where the person later provides the materials to their attorney in their individual capacity against the privilege holder.

The Rule of Leonardo Cordero v. Ghilotti Construction Company, Inc. is that Cal-OSHA regulations do not create nondelegable duties that preclude application of the Privette doctrine, and a hirer's site preparation activities do not constitute retained control over the contractor's work methods, under circumstances where the hirer hired an independent contractor to perform specific work and the contractor's employee was injured while performing that work.

The Rule of Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association v. County of Los Angeles is that a union's waiver of its right to meet and confer over an employer's outsourcing decision must be "clear and unmistakable," and vague management rights language stating the employer has "no obligation to negotiate the decision of any reorganization" does not satisfy this standard, under circumstances where the MOU discusses outsourcing procedures but does not expressly waive bargaining rights regarding the outsourcing decision itself.

The Rule of Ehrenkranz v. San Francisco Zen Center is that the ministerial exception does not bar wage-and-hour claims by ministers against religious organizations absent evidence that such claims raise an ecclesiastical concern, under circumstances where the claims seek only lost or unpaid wages for work performed as part of the religious organization's commercial activities and adjudication requires no inquiry into ecclesiastical matters.

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 Fuentes v. Empire Nissan, Inc. is that a contract's format and illegibility generally do not support substantive unconscionability, but courts must closely scrutinize difficult-to-read contracts for unfair or one-sided terms when high procedural unconscionability exists, under circumstances where an employment arbitration agreement is presented in nearly illegible tiny print with minimal time for review.

The Rule of Zenith Insurance Company v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board is that equitable tolling of the 60-day deadline under former Labor Code section 5909 cannot justify the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board's 20-month delay in issuing a decision on reconsideration after granting a petition for "further study," under circumstances where the Board failed to demonstrate reasonable and good faith conduct in attempting to comply with statutory procedures.

The Rule of De Paolo is that a terminated resident manager whose occupancy was contingent solely upon employment has no right to continue possession after employment termination and is not entitled to Tenant Protection Act protections, under circumstances where the resident manager's agreement explicitly conditioned occupancy on continued employment and required vacation within 30 days of termination.

The Rule of Parsonage v. Wal-Mart Associates, Inc. is that ICRAA authorizes consumers to recover the statutory sum of $10,000 as a remedy for a violation of their statutory rights, without any further showing of concrete injury or adverse employment decision, under circumstances where an employer fails to comply with any requirement of ICRAA's disclosure and consent provisions.

The Rule of Bishop v. San Diego County Employees Retirement Association is that a public employee suffers a "conviction" within the meaning of Government Code section 7522.74 when the employee pleads guilty to or is found guilty of a job-related felony, regardless of whether the court later reduces the offense to a misdemeanor under Penal Code section 17(b), under circumstances where the employee pleaded guilty to a felony charge before any reduction occurred.

The Rule of Trustees of the California State University is that public employers have a duty to bargain over reasonably foreseeable effects of student vaccination policy changes on immunocompromised faculty health and safety, but implementation must actually begin before an unfair practice violation occurs, under the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA).

The Rule of Sorokunov v. NetApp is that an arbitration award finding that a plaintiff did not suffer individual Labor Code violations can preclude the same plaintiff from claiming standing as an "aggrieved employee" in a PAGA action based on the identical violations, under circumstances where the plaintiff fully litigated the Labor Code violations in arbitration with a final award against them.

The Rule of Monroe is that a state employee who service retires while under investigation for misconduct is ineligible for disability retirement benefits because the service retirement constitutes a complete severance of the employer-employee relationship, eliminating the necessary prerequisite for disability retirement—the right to return to service, under circumstances where the employee's departure was not related to a disabling medical condition and occurred during misconduct proceedings.

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 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 Paknad v. Superior Court is that when an employer defends against an employee's discrimination lawsuit by asserting an avoidable consequences defense based on the scope and adequacy of its internal investigation, the employer waives attorney-client privilege and work product protection as to all factual findings about the employee's allegations and information relevant to the investigation's scope and adequacy, under circumstances where the employer voluntarily put the investigation's thoroughness and independence at issue in its pleadings and discovery responses.

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 Amezcua v. Superior Court is that trial courts may not condition leave to amend pleadings on payment of opposing party's attorney fees unless specifically authorized by statute or agreement between parties, under Code of Civil Procedure section 473(a) which contains no attorney fee-shifting provision.

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.

The Rule of Gibbs v. County of Humboldt is that a public entity has mandatory statutory duties enforceable under Government Code section 815.6 to (1) maintain employee personnel records and allow inspection under Government Code section 31011 and Labor Code section 1198.5, and (2) timely enroll eligible employees in CalPERS under Government Code section 20283, under circumstances where the entity is a contracting agency with CalPERS and has failed to discharge these duties causing injury to the employee's retirement benefits.