Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-5_10-cv-01070/USCOURTS-cand-5_10-cv-01070-7/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 28:1441 Petition for Removal- Labor/Mgmnt. Relations

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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Case No. 5:10-cv-01070 EJD

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING PART DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY

JUDGMENT AND PARTIAL JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS

United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SAN JOSE DIVISION

MAY MOUA,

Plaintiff(s),

 v.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

MACHINES CORPORATION, et. al.,

Defendant(s). /

CASE NO. 5:10-cv-01070 EJD

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND

DENYING PART DEFENDANTS’

MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY

JUDGMENT AND PARTIAL JUDGMENT

ON THE PLEADINGS

[Docket Item No(s). 70]

In this action alleging violations of the California Labor Code and related statutes,

Defendants International Business Machines (“IBM”), Joseph Koenig and Venkatasubramiam Iyer

(collectively, “Defendants”) move for summary judgment and judgment on the pleadings on

Plaintiff May Moua’s (“Plaintiff”) cause of action under the Private Attorneys General Act

(“PAGA”), California Labor Code § 2699. See Docket Item No. 70. Plaintiff has filed written

opposition to the motion. See Docket Item No. 74. 

Having carefully considered this matter, the court finds that some but not all of Defendants’

arguments have merit. Accordingly, the motion will be granted in part and denied and part.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Plaintiff was employed by IBM as an Advisory Software Specialist (“Software Specialist”)

beginning in March, 2005. See Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”), Docket Item No. 66, at ¶ 12. 

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Case No. 5:10-cv-01070 EJD

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING PART DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY

JUDGMENT AND PARTIAL JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS

Plaintiff alleges that while working as a Software Specialist, IBM misclassified her as an “exempt”

employee and did not pay her for premium rates for overtime work. Id. at ¶¶ 13-14. She further

alleges that IBM failed to provide her with accurate wage statements, failed to provide meal and rest

periods, failed to pay all wages due upon separation from employment, and improperly terminated

her pregnancy leave. Id. at ¶¶ 17-20.

Plaintiff initially commenced this action in Santa Clara County Superior Court as both a

purported class action and representative action under PAGA. See Docket Item No. 1. The thennamed defendants removed the action to this court on March 2, 2010, and Plaintiff was thereafter

granted leave to file an amended complaint to add Iyer as an individual defendant and to assert

additional Labor Code violations against the already-existing defendants. See Docket Item Nos. 1,

44, 45. 

On December 9, 2011, Plaintiff moved for leave to file the SAC. See Docket Item No. 58. 

In that motion, Plaintiff related that after engaging in class discovery, she determined the size of the

proposed class could not meet the federal requirements for class certification and sought to amend

the complaint again in order to remove class allegations, provide additional bases for her wrongful

termination claim, and amend her prayer for relief. For their part, Defendants opposed the proposed

amendments as futile, untimely, prejudicial and sought in bad faith. In particular, Defendants argued

that the representative PAGA claim could not be maintained unless Plaintiff met the standards for

class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Since Plaintiff admitted she could not

meet those requirements, Defendants believed the PAGA claim was rendered futile. 

This court disagreed and granted the motion for leave to file the SAC. See Order, Docket

Item No. 64. The SAC was filed on February 1, 2012. See Docket Item No. 66. 

Other than removing the class action allegations, the SAC contains no new factual content. 

It does, however, include an additional notice to the Labor and Workforce Development Agency

(“LWDA”) dated August 10, 2011, which contains the following statement:

This office represents May Moua and other similarly situated IBM

employees in relation to claims that IBM violated various provisions

of the California Labor Code as related these employees. Currently

those similarly situated IBM employees are: Aristotle Aquino, Bryan

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Case No. 5:10-cv-01070 EJD

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING PART DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY

JUDGMENT AND PARTIAL JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS

Barker, Raghava Bellala, Linda Benson, Jason Drury, Rene Erdem,

James Fabia, Lijun Gu, Kevin Hunt, Sendhil Jaramayan, Madhuri

Kancherla, Nirmal Lalwani, Christopher Larosa, Xianzhan Lin, Cheuk

Li, Patricia Ann Marcus, Rickey Moore, Aravind Murthy, Thach

Nguyen, Vijay Peduru, Alan Polini, Reddiah Prathipati, Guarav Rana,

Mohammad Rizwan, Mariam Samaie, Deepak Sharma, Pauline Yeung

and June Yoshii. 

This motion followed the filing of the SAC. 

II. DISCUSSION

A. Legal Standard: Judgment on the Pleadings

Rule 12(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides in relevant part: “After the

pleadings are closed but within such time as not to delay the trial, any party may move for judgment

on the pleadings.” For purposes of a motion under Rule 12(c), the allegations of the non-moving

party are accepted as true and the allegations of the moving party that have been denied are

presumed false. See Hal Roach Studios v. Richard Feiner & Co., 896 F.2d 1542, 1550 (9th Cir.

1990). “Judgment on the pleadings is proper when the moving party clearly establishes on the face

of the pleadings that no material issue of fact remains to be resolved and that it is entitled to

judgment as a matter of law.” Id.

A motion for judgment on the pleadings is generally evaluated under the same legal standard

as a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6). Lopez Reyes v. Kenosian & Miele, LLP, 525 F.

Supp. 2d 1158, 1160 (N.D. Cal. 2007). A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) can be granted

based on the lack of a cognizable legal theory or the absence of sufficient facts alleged under a

cognizable legal theory. See Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep’t, 901 F.2d 696, 699 (9th Cir. 1990).

B. Application

Defendants argue they are entitled to partial judgment on the pleadings on Plaintiff’s PAGA

claim to the extent Plaintiff seeks to bring claims on behalf of employees that are not identified in

the SAC. In other words, Defendants believe the PAGA claim should limited to Plaintiff and the

collection of other individuals named in the LWDA notice letter attached to the SAC. Under

PAGA, an “aggrieved employee” may bring a civil action against an employer “on behalf of himself

or herself and other current or former employees.” Cal. Lab. Code § 2699(a). If the employee is

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ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING PART DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY

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successful, 75 percent of the penalties recovered go to the Labor and Workforce Development

Agency (“LWDA”), and the remaining 25 percent go to the aggrieved employees. Cal. Lab. Code §

2699(I). The California Supreme Court described the purpose of PAGA in Arias v. Superior Court,

46 Cal. 4th 969, 980 (2009):

The Legislature declared that adequate financing of labor law

enforcement was necessary to achieve maximum compliance with

state labor laws, that staffing levels for labor law enforcement agencies

had declined and were unlikely to keep pace with the future growth of

the labor market, and that it was therefore in the public interest to

allow aggrieved employees, acting as private attorneys general, to

recover civil penalties for Labor Code violations, with the

understanding that labor law enforcement agencies were to retain

primacy over private enforcement efforts.

Since this motion relies on the same standard applicable to a motion to dismiss, the court also

looks to the general requirements for initial pleading. It is well settled that Federal Rule of Civil

Procedure 8(a) requires a plaintiff to plead each claim with sufficient specificity to “give the

defendant fair notice of what the . . . claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Bell Atlantic

Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (internal quotations omitted). To that end, factual

allegations “must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level” such that the claim

“is plausible on its face.” Id. at 556-57. A claim is “plausible on its face” when the plaintiff pleads

“factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for

the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 664 (2009). 

Here, the actual text of the SAC contains allegations personal only to Plaintiff. Indeed, after

indicating in the first paragraph that she “brings this action individually on her own behalf,” she then

describes details of her own employment experience at IBM. See SAC, at ¶¶ 1, 12-20. As a result,

all of the causes of action aside from the representative PAGA claim arise from Defendants’

purported conduct toward Plaintiff. More specifically, it is the alleged misclassification of Plaintiff

as an exempt employee while working as a Software Specialist which underlies Plaintiff’s theory of

liability for nearly all the causes of action. 

The representative PAGA claim can obviously rely on the same allegations and purported

violations stemming from the misclassification of Plaintiff as a basis for penalties. But since PAGA

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also allows for the recovery of penalties “through a civil action brought by an aggrieved employee

on behalf of himself or herself and other current or former employees,” this claim can potentially

encompass violations other than those attributable solely to Plaintiff. Cal. Labor Code § 2699(a). In

light of this possibility, both the SAC and the written opposition to this motion clarify that Plaintiff

does, in fact, seek to broaden the scope of her PAGA claim in order to pursue claims of other

employees here. 

Defining the applicable scope of Plaintiff’s PAGA claim presents a challenge, however, for

two primary reasons. First, as Plaintiff notes in the opposition to this motion, PAGA’s provisions

are broad and do not specify which “other current and former employees” can be represented by an

“aggrieved employee.” That lack of specificity may be purposeful in order to accomplish the

statute’s purpose “to achieve maximum compliance with state labor laws,” but at the same time adds

a certain obscurity to the limits imposed on claims brought pursuant to its provisions. Arias, 46 Cal.

4th at 980. 

Second, this court has already ruled that PAGA representative claims are not subject to the

requirements applied to class actions through Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. See Order,

Docket Item No. 64. As a result, Plaintiff is not under a direct obligation to define with exactitude

the collection of individuals she seeks to represent in the same way as the class action plaintiff must

in order to achieve class certification. See Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 23(c)(1)(B) (“An order that certifies a

class action must define the class and the class claims, issues, or defenses . . . .”). 

The lack of a clearly defined pleading standard under PAGA does not, however, operate to

excuse a federal plaintiff from the obligation under Iqbal and Twombly to provide sufficient factual

information to support a theory of liability and any attendant causes of action. Those general

pleading requirements still apply. For this reason, other courts have found insufficient PAGA claims

which do not provide at least some definition of the class of employees implicated by the case. See,

e.g., Chie v. Reed Elsevier, Inc., No. C-11-1784 (EMC), 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99153, at *11-12,

2011 WL 3879495 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 2, 2011) (finding PAGA allegations which merely stated that

“[t]he exact number of aggrieved employees can easily be ascertained by reviewing Defendant’s

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employee and payroll records” subject to dismissal because “[f]or a representative action . . . there

must be some specificity as to who the persons are that the plaintiff seeks to represent.”); Jeske v.

Maxim Healthcare Servs., Inc., No. CV F 11-1838 LJO JLT, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2963, at *36-

37, 2012 WL 78242 (E.D. Cal. Jan. 10, 2012) (dismissing as “imprecisely defined” a PAGA claim

which identified “aggrieved employees” as “[a]ll persons who were or are employed by Defendants

in the State of California and against whom one or more of the alleged violations described below

was committed.”); cf. Hibbs-Rines v. Seagate Techs., LLC, No. C 08-05430 SI, 2009 U.S. Dist.

LEXIS 19283, at *9-10, 2009 WL 513496 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 2, 2009) (finding sufficient PAGA

allegations which defined represented employees by job titles and job duties). 

It is therefore apparent that, in order to provide “fair notice” of the scope of the PAGA claim,

Plaintiff was required to plead some definition of the represented employees in the SAC in some

way. As Hibb-Rines demonstrates, Plaintiff could have done so by referring to categories of

employees by job title or by job duties, which could have expanded the scope of the PAGA claim

under Rule 8's permissive pleading standard. But here, Plaintiff chose to provide a restrictive

definition of her PAGA claim by identifying the names of “similarly situated” employees in the

notice letter sent to the LWDA, and informed the LWDA that she was providing notice to the

agency only on behalf of those “similarly situated IBM employees.” See SAC, at Ex. 3. Having

reviewed the entire SAC with the LWDA letter attached, this list of “similarly situated” employees

is the only legally-permissible way to define Plaintiff’s PAGA claim since the actual text of the

cause of action is, for the most part, simply a recitation of the statute without any real factual

enhancement. The one other possibility is a definition which includes all IBM employees in

California. That type of definition was rejected in Jeske, and this court agrees that such an

expansive claim would transform this case into one proscribed the by Supreme Court’s admonition

against unlocking the “doors of discovery” to a plaintiff asserting mere speculation. See Iqbal, 556

U.S. at 678-79 (“Rule 8 marks a notable and generous departure from the hypertechnical,

code-pleading regime of a prior era, but it does not unlock the doors of discovery for a plaintiff

armed with nothing more than conclusions.”); see also Twombly, 550 U.S. at 561 (rejecting a

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 To be clear, the court does not intend this decision to be construed as one which advocates

limiting all PAGA plaintiffs to the administrative notice provided to the LWDA. Doing so would be

contrary to PAGA’s purpose. Indeed, it is only these particular circumstances which require this

result: where the sole definition of “aggrieved employees” that both provides “fair notice” under

Rule 8 and reasonably can be extracted from the pleading happens to be a restrictive one. For this

reason, this case-specific decision is not contrary to others which decline to limit a PAGA plaintiff

to the notice provided to the LWDA. See, e.g., Cardenas v. McLane Foodservices, Inc., 796 F.

Supp. 2d 1246, 1258-61 (C.D. Cal. 2011). 

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pleading standard in which “a wholly conclusory statement of claim would survive a motion to

dismiss whenever the pleadings left open the possibility that a plaintiff might later establish some

‘set of [undisclosed] facts’ to support recovery.”). 

Accordingly, on this inquiry confined to the face of the SAC itself, the court agrees with

Defendants that Plaintiff’s PAGA claim must be limited to those specifically-named individuals. 

The court concedes that this result is somewhat unusual within the context of the PAGA statutory

scheme, but Plaintiff has not offered an alternative definition which passes muster under Rule 8. 

The vague allegations in the text of the SAC cannot be used to keep open the scope of the

representative PAGA claim until some unknown point in this case, especially when discovery in this

action has been proceeding now for some time and the window for amending the pleadings as of

right has expired. 

Defendants’ Motion for Judgment on the pleadings will be granted, and any claims on behalf

of unidentified employees will be dismissed. This dismissal will be without leave to amend because

Plaintiff did not move to amend this claim in either the opposition or separate motion, nor did she

explain the relevancy of any outstanding discovery in anything more than a cursory fashion. As

such, the court concludes that allowing for amendment at this time would be futile. See Miller v.

Rykoff-Sexton, 845 F.2d 209, 214 (9th Cir. 1988) (“A motion for leave to amend may be denied if it

appears to be futile or legally insufficient.”).1

C. Legal Standard: Motion for Summary Judgment

A motion for summary judgment should be granted if “there is no genuine dispute as to any

material fact and the movant is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a);

Addisu v. Fred Meyer, Inc., 198 F.3d 1130, 1134 (9th Cir. 2000). The moving party bears the initial

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burden of informing the court of the basis for the motion and identifying the portions of the

pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions, or affidavits that demonstrate the

absence of a triable issue of material fact. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986).

If the moving party meets this initial burden, the burden then shifts to the non-moving party

to go beyond the pleadings and designate “specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for

trial.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(e); Celotex, 477 U.S. at 324. The court must regard as true the opposing

party’s evidence, if supported by affidavits or other evidentiary material. Celotex, 477 U.S. at 324. 

However, the mere suggestion that facts are in controversy, as well as conclusory or speculative

testimony in affidavits and moving papers, is not sufficient to defeat summary judgment. See

Thornhill Publ’g Co. v. GTE Corp., 594 F.2d 730, 738 (9th Cir. 1979). Instead, the non-moving

party must come forward with admissible evidence to satisfy the burden. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c); see

also Hal Roach Studios, Inc. v. Feiner & Co., Inc., 896 F.2d 1542, 1550 (9th Cir. 1990). 

A genuine issue for trial exists if the non-moving party presents evidence from which a

reasonable jury, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to that party, could resolve the

material issue in his or her favor. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248-49 (1986);

Barlow v. Ground, 943 F.2d 1132, 1134-36 (9th Cir. 1991). Conversely, summary judgment must

be granted where a party “fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element

essential to that party’s case, on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial.” Celotex, 477

U.S. at 322. 

D. Application

Before turning to the issues raised by Defendants, the court must first address Plaintiff’s

request to postpone decision so that Plaintiff can receive, review and incorporate Defendants’

discovery responses into an amended opposition. Pursuant to Rule 56(d), “[i]f a nonmovant shows

by affidavit or declaration that, for specified reasons, it cannot present facts essential to justify its

opposition, the court may: (1) defer considering the motion or deny it; (2) allow time to obtain

affidavits or declarations or to take discovery; or (3) issue any other appropriate order.” A Rule

56(d) applicant must, at the very least, “make (a) a timely application which (b) specifically

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identifies (c) relevant information, (d) where there is some basis for believing that the information

sought actually exists.” Blough v. Holland Realty, Inc., 574 F.3d 1084, 1091 n.5 (9th Cir. 2009)

(quoting Emp’rs Teamsters Local Nos. 175 & 505 Pension Trust Fund v. Clorox Co., 353 F.3d 1125,

1129-30 (9th Cir. 2004) (internal quotations omitted); see also Tatum v. City & County of San

Francisco, 441 F.3d 1090, 1100 (9th Cir. 2006). “Bare allegations or vague assertions” of a need for

further discovery are not enough; the applicant must describe with “some precision the materials he

hopes to obtain with further discovery, and exactly how he expects those materials would help him

in opposing summary judgment.” Everson v. Leis, 556 F.3d 484, 493 (6th Cir. 2009) (internal

quotations omitted). 

Plaintiff has not complied with the requirements of Rule 56(d) in either form or substance. 

While an affidavit or declaration containing specific information is explicitly required, Plaintiff

provided neither in support of her request for postponement, and the declaration of Plaintiff’s

counsel submitted with the opposition to this motion only describes the attached exhibits. See Decl.

of Heather Borlase, Docket Item No. 76. For these reasons, Plaintiff’s request must be denied. 

As to the substance of the summary judgment motion, Defendants seek an order which

curtails Plaintiff’s PAGA claim based on the applicable statute of limitations. PAGA claims for

civil penalties are subject to the one year statute of limitations contained in California Civil Code §

340(a). Thomas v. Home Depot USA Inc., 527 F. Supp. 2d 1003, 1007 (N.D. Cal. 2007). This oneyear limitations period is tolled for the administrative exhaustion period - “the (at most) 33-day

period during which the LWDA is assessing, or the employer may be curing, the alleged violations.” 

Martinez v. Antique & Salvage Liquidators, Inc., No. C09-00997 HRL, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS

12198, at *25, 2011 WL 500029 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 8, 2011) (citing Cal. Labor Code § 2699.3(d)). 

Defendants present their argument under the statute of limitations as a choice between two

alternative outcomes. Primarily, Defendants argue that, since the PAGA claim is limited only to

those individuals identified in the SAC, and since Plaintiff has not plead misclassification in a

position other than System Specialist, the court should grant summary judgment to Defendants for

any claims brought on behalf of employees who did not hold the System Specialist position during

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the limitations period. Based on a filing date of January 11, 2010, for the original complaint,

Defendants contend that violations prior to December 9, 2008 - which is one year and thirty-three

days prior to January 11, 2010 - are time-barred. 

The court rejects this argument because a further restriction based on job title is unjustified

and inconsistent with PAGA. As already explained, PAGA’s provisions and corresponding

definitions are broad. Most relevant here, an “aggrieved employee” under PAGA is “any person

who was employed by the alleged violator and against whom one or more of the alleged violations

was committed.” Cal. Labor Code § 2699(c). Defendants seek to change that definition into

something allowing PAGA plaintiffs to bring claims only on behalf of others doing their same job. 

Such a confinement would be contrary to PAGA’s purpose to “grant individual citizens the right to

pursue civil penalties that typically only the state could bring.” Cardenas, 796 F. Supp. 2d at 1259. 

Thus, while the “fair notice” pleading standard does require imposition of some limit to Plaintiff’s

claim based on the allegations in the SAC, neither Rule 8, PAGA nor the SAC’s allegations support

the additional limitation proposed by Defendants. Defendants know the names of the employees at

issue, and Plaintiff can maintain the PAGA claim for these named employees no matter their job

titles.

Alternatively, Defendants argue that a separate limitations period should apply to any PAGA

violations based on positions other than System Specialist. In essence, Defendants contend they

were not placed on notice that the PAGA claim encompassed other positions until the SAC. But

based on the broad nature of PAGA, the court disagrees that the current iteration of the PAGA claim

was not contemplated by its original version. In any event, the court would find that the current

PAGA allegations do relate back to the original complaint since the factual allegations remain the

same. See Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 15(c)(1)(B) (“An amendment to a pleading relates back to the date of

the original pleading when . . . the amendment asserts a claim or defense that arose out of the

conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out - or attempted to be set out - in the original pleading.”). 

These determinations notwithstanding, Defendants have demonstrated that three employees

included in Plaintiff’s PAGA claim terminated employment with IBM prior to commencement of the

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limitations period in December, 2008. Pursuant to the declaration of IBM’s compensation

professional, Lijun Gu, Kevin Hunt and Nirmal Lalwani each left their positions in 2007. See Decl.

of Don Comilloni, Docket Item No. 72. Plaintiff has not produced any evidence suggesting

otherwise. Accordingly, the court will grant Defendants’ motion for summary judgment as to these

employees. 

III. ORDER

Based on the foregoing, Defendants’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and Partial

Judgment on the Pleadings is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART as follows:

1. The Motion for Partial Judgment on the Pleadings is granted such that claims brought

on behalf of any employee not identified in the SAC is DISMISSED WITHOUT

LEAVE TO AMEND; and 

2. The Motion for Partial Summary Judgment is granted as to any claims brought on

behalf of Lijun Gu, Kevin Hunt and Nirmal Lalwani, but denied on all other grounds. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: October 30, 2012 

EDWARD J. DAVILA

United States District Judge

Case 5:10-cv-01070-EJD Document 85 Filed 10/30/12 Page 11 of 11