Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-2_20-cv-00273/USCOURTS-caed-2_20-cv-00273-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 28:1441 Petition for Removal- Civil Rights Act

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

----oo0oo----

ROBERT EARL MANN, on behalf of 

himself and all other similarly 

situated,

Plaintiff,

v.

ALTEC INDUSTRIES, INC., an 

Alabama Corporation,

Defendant.

No. 2-20-cv-00273 WBS DB

ORDER RE: MOTION TO REMAND

----oo0oo----

Plaintiff Robert Mann filed this class action against 

defendant Altec Industries, Inc. (“Altec”) in Solano County 

Superior Court alleging various violations of the California 

Labor Code. (Compl. (Docket No. 1, Ex. A).) Defendant removed 

the action to this court pursuant to the Class Action Fairness 

Act (“CAFA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d). (Notice of Removal (Docket 

No. 1).) Before the court now is plaintiff’s motion to remand 

for failure to meet the required amount in controversy. (Mot. to 

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Remand (“Mot.”) (Docket No. 5).) 

I. Background

Plaintiff worked for defendant as a non-exempt employee 

in its manufacturing plant beginning in December 2018. (Compl. ¶ 

10.) Plaintiff alleges eight causes of action in connection with 

his complaint: (1) failure to pay overtime wages (California 

Labor Code §§ 204, 510, 558, 1194, 1198); (2) minimum wage 

violations (California Labor Code §§ 1182.12, 1194, 1194.2, 

1197); (3) failure to provide meal periods (California Labor Code 

§§ 226.7, 512); (4) failure to provide rest periods (California 

Labor Code §§ 226.7, 516); (5) failure to indemnify all necessary 

business expenditures (California Labor Code § 2802); (6) failure 

to provide accurate itemized wage statements (California Labor 

Code § 226); (7) failure to provide wages due at separation of 

employment (California Labor Code §§ 201-203); and (8) violation 

of California Business & Professions Code § 17200, et seq. 

Defendant filed a notice of removal based on CAFA on February 5, 

2020. (Docket No. 1.)

II. Discussion

“Congress designed the terms of CAFA specifically to 

permit a defendant to remove certain class or mass actions into 

federal court.” Arias v. Residence Inn by Marriott, 936 F.3d 

920, 924 (9th Cir. 2019) (internal citations omitted). It was 

intended to be interpreted “expansively.” Id. However, certain 

threshold requirements, such as the amount in controversy, must 

still be met. “CAFA provides the federal district courts with 

‘original jurisdiction’ to hear a ‘class action’ if the class has 

more than 100 members, the parties are minimally diverse, and the 

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‘matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $5,000,000.’” 

Standard Fire Ins. Co. v. Knowles, 568 U.S. 588, 592 (2013) 

(citing 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(2), (d)(5)(B)). 

Here, plaintiff does not contest the minimal diversity 

and numerosity requirements; plaintiff solely argues defendant 

has failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the 

total amount in controversy exceeds $5,000,000. (Mot. at 1.) To 

determine the amount in controversy, the court must first look to 

the complaint. Ibarra v. Manheim Invs., Inc., 775 F.3d 1193, 

1197 (9th Cir. 2015). Here, the complaint does not allege a 

specific amount in damages. (See Compl.) In the absence of a 

precise number, defendant estimated that the amount in 

controversy is $5,160,737.50. (Notice of Removal ¶ 56.) 

Defendant now “has the burden to put forward evidence showing 

that the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million . . . and to 

persuade the court that the estimate of damages in controversy is 

a reasonable one.” Ibarra, 775 F.3d at 1197. This can include 

affidavits, declarations, or “other summary-judgment-type 

evidence relevant to the amount in controversy at the time of 

removal.” Id. 

Defendant submitted a three-page declaration from 

Debbie Muhl, Altec’s Human Resources Manager, in support of its 

motion to remand. (See Decl. of Debbie Muhl (“Muhl Decl.”) 

(Docket No. 1-5).) Muhl declared that, based on Altec’s payroll 

and timekeeping records from December 26, 2015 through January 

21, 2020, there were 397 current and former hourly, non-exempt 

associates in California, who worked at least 49,720 weeks 

collectively. (Id. ¶¶ 3-6.) Non-exempt employees were paid on a 

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weekly basis and issued wage statements each week. (Id. ¶ 8; see 

also Supp. Decl. of Debbie Muhl (“Muhl Supp. Decl.”) ¶ 6 (Docket 

No. 6-1).) The lowest hourly rate for these employees during the 

period was $15.50. (Muhl Decl. ¶ 7.) 

Defendant relied on these numbers to estimate that the 

amount in controversy was at least $5,160,737.50. (Notice of 

Removal ¶ 56.) Specifically, defendant argues that plaintiff 

could claim $1,155,990 in overtime wages, $497,200 in unpaid 

wages and $424,440 in accompanying liquidated damages, $770,660 

in unpaid meal breaks and another $770,660 in unpaid rest 

periods, and $509,640 in waiting time penalties, for a total 

estimated recovery of $4,128,590. (Id. ¶¶ 28, 32, 36, 41, 45, 

51.) This figure, combined with an estimated 25 percent of the 

total recovery in attorney’s fees ($1,032,147.50), places the 

amount in controversy over $5 million. (Id. ¶ 55.) Plaintiff 

argues these estimates are exaggerated and that defendant relied 

upon unreasonable assumptions to arrive at this total. (See

generally Mot.) 

When a party relies on a chain of reasoning that 

includes assumptions, those assumptions must be reasonable. 

Arias, 936 F.3d at 925 (citing Ibarra, 775 F.3d at 1199). While 

“[a]n assumption may be reasonable if it is founded on the 

allegations of the complaint,” the Ninth Circuit has suggested 

“assum[ing] a violation rate of 100% may or may not [be] valid.” 

Id. 

Defendant purportedly provided a “conservative 

analysis” in its overtime wage analysis by assuming one one-hour 

violation per employee (397) per week (49,720) at time and a half 

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of the minimum hourly rate ($23.25) to arrive at $1,155,990. 

(Notice of Removal ¶ 28.) However, this calculation ignores the 

allegations in plaintiff’s complaint. The complaint does not 

allege that the non-exempt employees were not paid at all for the 

overtime hours worked. Rather, it alleges that “non-exempt 

employees were not properly paid at the correct overtime rate for 

all hours worked in excess of eight hours per shift” because 

defendant “failed to include . . . non-discretionary Production 

and Attendance bonuses.” (Compl. ¶ 14 (emphasis added).) 

Defendant’s calculation seems to assume that all 397 putative 

class members were not paid any overtime wages at all, rather 

than using plaintiff’s theory that the overtime pay did not 

properly take bonuses into consideration. As the employer, 

defendant is presumed to know how overtime wages were calculated 

and the actual rate paid, and could have used those figures in 

its estimation. Accordingly, defendant’s $1,155,990 estimate is 

ill-founded and overstated. 

Next, defendant’s calculation for unpaid minimum wages 

and, by extension, liquidated damages, also sweeps too broadly. 

Defendant assumes each putative class member (397) is entitled to 

one hour of unpaid minimum wages per work week (49,720) for time 

spent donning and doffing protective gear, without offering any 

evidence to support its contention that each action took six

minutes per day. (See Notice of Removal ¶ 32.) Accordingly,

defendant has failed to offer proper evidence to support $921,640 

of its estimated amount in controversy. (See id. ¶¶ 32, 36.) 

Defendant also ignores the relevant class for purposes 

of calculating meal break violations. In his complaint, 

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plaintiff narrowed his meal period violations to those who did 

not receive a meal period “before the end of the fifth hour of 

work and second meal period before the end of the tenth hour of 

work.” (Compl. ¶ 17.) There is no allegation, or even a 

suggestion, in the complaint that all of the non-exempt employees 

fell into that category every week. Again, as the employer, 

defendant could be expected to know, or at least be able to

approximate, how many of the employees worked through a ten hour 

shift without the requisite meal break. Rather than provide 

relevant information to determine the size of the class, 

defendant calculated one violation for all 397 non-exempt 

employees for the 49,720 weeks worked, resulting in an estimated 

recovery of $770,660 for meal break violations. (Notice of 

Removal ¶¶ 41, 45.) This overbroad definition of the relevant 

class, and consequently the damages recoverable, supports 

remanding the action. See Miller v. A-1 Express Delivery Servs., 

Inc., No. 16-cv-06251-WHO, 2017 WL 462406, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 

3, 2017). 

Finally, when estimating waiting time penalties,

defendant assumes that each of the 137 separated employees

suffered a wage violation for the entire 30-day period. (Notice 

of Removal ¶ 51.) As stated above, the Ninth Circuit has 

consistently found it is unreasonable to rely on maximum 

assumptions when defendant’s evidence lacks specificity. See, 

e.g., Arias, 936 F.3d at 925; LaCross v. Knight Transportation, 

Inc., 775 F.3d 1200, 1203 (9th Cir. 2015) (finding use of the 

maximum assumption reasonable after defendant included all 

available evidence in its amount in controversy computation). 

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Accordingly, defendant’s estimated damages of $509,640 are

unsupported by the evidence provided. 

While defendant need not “provide evidence proving the 

assumptions correct,” the assumed rate of violations must have 

“some reasonable ground underlying them.” Arias, 936 F.3d at 

925-27 (quoting Ibarra, 775 F.3d at 1199) (internal quotations 

omitted). Defendant’s sweeping assumptions fall short of the 

Ninth Circuit’s guidance for reasonability. See id. at 925-27. 

In sum, defendant’s total amount in controversy of $4,128,590 is 

unsupported, which in turn alters the attorney’s fee calculation 

responsible for carrying defendant’s amount in controversy over 

the threshold requirement. (See Notice of Removal ¶ 55.) 

Accordingly, defendant has failed to produce appropriate evidence 

to support its amount in controversy calculation, and it cannot 

avail itself of this court’s jurisdiction. 

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that plaintiff’s motion to 

remand (Docket No. 5) be, and the same thereby is, GRANTED;

AND IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this action be, and the 

same hereby is, REMANDED to the Superior Court of the State of 

California, in and for the County of Solano.

Dated: April 15, 2020

 

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