Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-2_19-cv-01340/USCOURTS-caed-2_19-cv-01340-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Costco Wholesale Corporation
Defendant
Megan Rough
Plaintiff

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

MEGAN ROUGH, individually and on 

behalf of all similarly situated current 

and former employees of Defendants in 

the State of California,

Plaintiff,

v.

COSTCO WHOLESALE 

CORPORATION, a Delaware 

Corporation; and DOES 1-50, inclusive,

Defendants.

No. 2:19-cv-01340-MCE-DB

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Through this action, Plaintiff Megan Rough (“Plaintiff”) seeks relief from Defendant

Costco Wholesale Corporation (“Defendant”) for violations of the California Labor Code 

and the Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders. Plaintiff, individually and on behalf 

of all other similarly situated employees, filed a Class Action Complaint in the Superior 

Court of California, County of Solano, after which Defendant removed Plaintiff’s case to 

federal court pursuant to the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d). 

ECF No. 1. Presently before the Court is Defendant’s Motion to Change Venue to the 

Central District of California under the “first-to-file rule” where the case Nevarez v. 

///

Case 2:19-cv-01340-MCE-DB Document 17 Filed 04/21/20 Page 1 of 4
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Costco Wholesale Corp., C.D. Cal. Case No. 2:19-cv-03454-SVW-Skx (“Nevarez”), is

already pending. ECF No. 11.

1

 For the following reasons, that Motion is DENIED.

2

 

BACKGROUND3

Plaintiff brings the present action on behalf of herself and all current and former 

non-exempt, hourly-paid employees who worked for Defendant within California and who 

worked one or more closing shifts during the period from four years preceding the filing 

of this Complaint to final judgment. Defendant employed Plaintiff as a front-end 

associate in its warehouse store located in Woodland, California, from December 2017 

to January 2018, and in another warehouse located in Vacaville, California, from March 

2018 to April 2019.

Plaintiff alleges that she and other similarly situated employees continued to work 

after business hours at Defendant’s stores. More specifically, after the stores’ doors 

were closed to customers and locked, Defendant required Plaintiff and other similarly 

situated employees to clock out and then walk to a designated exit location. The 

employees then had to call and wait for a manager to meet them at the designated exit 

location. When the manager arrived, he or she would inspect the employees’ bags for 

store merchandise. After checking the employees’ bags, the manager would radio the 

stores’ security guards to ensure the parking lot was safe before the exit doors were 

opened. 

According to Plaintiff, employees were not relieved of their duties until several 

minutes after clocking out and were not compensated for the time they were on-duty and 

1 Another similar later-filed case, Mosley v. Costco Wholesale Corp., C.D. Cal. Case No. 2:19-cv07935-SVW-SKx (“Mosley”), is also proceeding before the same Central District of California court. 

2 Because oral argument would not be of material assistance, the Court ordered this matter 

submitted on the briefs. E.D. Local Rule 230(g).

3 The following recitation of facts is taken, sometimes verbatim, from Plaintiff’s Class Action 

Complaint. ECF No. 1-2.

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required to complete the exit security procedure. Plaintiff defines two classes of similarly 

situated employees. First, Plaintiff seeks to represent the Closing-Shift Class, which

includes all current and former non-exempt employees who worked at Defendant’s 

warehouse stores and who worked one or more closing shifts at any time from four years 

prior to the filing of the Complaint to the present. Second, Plaintiff seeks to represent a 

subclass of employees entitled the Waiting Time Penalties Subclass, which includes all 

members of the Closing-Shift Class whose employment with Defendant ended at any 

time from three years prior to filing the Complaint to the present. The Complaint alleges 

the following claims under state law: (1) Failure to Pay Minimum and Regular Wages; 

(2) Failure to Pay All Overtime Wages; (3) Failure to Provide Accurate Wage 

Statements; (4) Failure to Timely Pay All Wages Due Upon Separation of Employment; 

and (5) Violation of California Business and Professions Code §§ 17200 et seq. 

ANALYSIS

The Nevarez action was filed well before this one, and the plaintiff in that case 

pursues claims overlapping those brought here. More specifically, the plaintiffs in 

Nevarez also sought to represent various classes of Defendant’s employees in pursuit of 

California wage and hour claims based on Defendant’s bag-checking and closing-shift

exit procedures. Given the similarity between that case and this one and between the 

relative classes of employees, Defendant thus seeks to transfer this action so it may be 

heard in conjunction with Nevarez and the subsequently filed Mosley case. 

“[W]hen duplicative actions are filed in courts of concurrent jurisdiction, the court 

‘which first acquired jurisdiction generally should proceed with the litigation.’” Horne v. 

Nissan North America, Inc., Case No. 17-cv-00436-MCE-DB, 2018 WL 746467, at *3 

(E.D. Cal. Feb. 6, 2018) (quoting Negrete v. Petsmart, Inc., 2013 WL 4853995, at *2 

(E.D. Cal. Sep. 10, 2013)). “The second-filed district court may, in its discretion, transfer, 

stay, or dismiss the case.” Id. at *2. This “first-to-file rule is discretionary and should be 

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applied ‘with a view to the dictates of sound judicial administration.’” Id. (quoting Apple 

Inc. v. Psystar Corp., 658 F.3d 1150, 1161 (9th Cir. 2011)). 

In this instance, both the parties and the claims are substantially similar. That 

said, the court in Nevarez declined to certify a class and thereafter remanded the matter 

to state court on the basis that it consequently lacked jurisdiction under CAFA. In 

addition, the Mosley plaintiff has now voluntarily dismissed that action as well. 

Accordingly, there is very little to be gained by transferring this action to a court that 

never reached the merits of the claims presented and no longer has any cases pending 

before it. Defendant’s Motion to Transfer is thus DENIED. 

CONCLUSION

For the reasons set forth above, Defendant’s Motion to Change Venue, ECF 

No. 11, is DENIED. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: April 21, 2020

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