Source: https://www.calbizlit.com/cal_biz_lit/employment_litigation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 11:11:36+00:00

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sue because they aren't class members, either because they never had causes of action against the defendant or, because, as a result of changed circumstances or law, they no longer do. In such headless class action cases, the question presented is whether the plaintiffs can conduct discovery from the defendant to try to find better class representatives. There was quite a bit of appellate activity on this issue several years ago, which CBL blogged about here, here and here, among other places. But in general, the answer to the question often was "yes."
Well, here's a case where the answer isn't just "no." The answer is "hell no!" We're talking Starbucks Corporation v. Superior Court (Lords) (April 25, 2011) ___Cal.App.4th___ (Fourth Dist., G043650).
Facts: back in the day when Jerry Brown was the youngest governor in the history of the Golden State, and long before he became the oldest, California passed a law that required the "destruction" by "permanent obliteration" of all records of minor marijuana convictions that were more than two years old, and made it illegal for employers to ask about such convictions on their job applications. Violation brought either actual damages or statutory penalties of $200 per applicant. The statutes can be found at Health & Safety Code sections 11361.5, subd. (a), 11361.7 and Labor Code section 432.7, subd. (a).
Starbucks allegedly had a "have you ever been convicted" question on its job application that didn't exclude old, minor marijuana convictions. So three applicants -- who had nary a conviction among them -- had the bright idea of suing Starbucks on behalf of 135,000 job applicants, seeking some $26 million in penalties. In a previous published decision, Starbucks Corporation v. Superior Court (2008) 168 Cal.App.4th 1436 (Starbucks I), the Court of Appeal reached the rather sensible conclusion that applicants who had no marijuana convictions had no standing and that as such, the plaintiffs could not serve as class representatives.
So, after Starbucks I, everybody hauled themselves back to the trial court, where the plaintiffs asked to conduct discovery so they could find some better class representatives. The idea was this: Starbucks should search through all their job applications to find applicants with marijuana convictions. They should then send this information to a "neutral administrator" who would write the convicted applicants and ask, "hey, how would you like to disclose your marijuana conviction to the world and be class representatives in our great big fancy case against Starbucks?" And amazingly, the trial court said "Sure, why not?"
To which the Court of Appeal said "We'll tell you why not:"
Nobody can misunderstand this clear legislative purpose. Records of minor marijuana convictions are to be accorded the highest degree of privacy; they must be treated as if they never existed. Despite these strongly worded prohibitions, the subject discovery order requires Starbucks to rummage through old job applications to locate offenders whose existence otherwise would be hidden from public exposure.
Considering the manifest harm and the minimal benefit (all of which are wrapped up in the same legislation), the discovery order cannot possibly pass the Parris balancing test. As Hooper holds, publicly disclosing marijuana-related offenses covered by the marijuana reform legislation violates the individual offender's right of privacy.
But there's additioanal language CBL likes even more.
Wow. Language that will appear forever after in briefs opposing class certification in California.
One side note: years ago, a friend who is also a marketing consultant told CBL that his blog posts would be more compelling if he included images. So CBL often does. But who knew we'd get to include both the Starbucks logo and a marijuana leaf in the same post!
This just in: class certification in Dukes v. Wal-mart, the wage discrimination class action filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, has been affirmed in part by the Ninth Circuit. The slip opinion is here. 137 pages. Knock your self out.
Bottom line: class certification affirmed as to injunctive relief, and as to women employed by Wal-Mart when the case was filed. Remanded for further consideration on punitive damages and on certification, or separate class status, for women who were ex-employees when case filed.
I've been following with interest the case of Radiologist Dr. Martin Martinucci, who contended that Kaiser Hospital forced him to quit because he complained about the quality of its care. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Martinucci was hired in 2003 and resigned three years later after his supervisor and a human resources staffer accused him of being racist and making sexual advances toward a male technologist. His suit was a "constructive termination case," a difficult form of employment case in which the employee who resigns must prove that the resignation was essentially a firing because working conditions were so intolerable that no reasonable employee would have stayed. This was established by the California Supremes in Turner v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (1994) 7 Cal.4th 1238.
As California Punitive Damages, an Exemplary Blog has reported, the jury found for Martinucci last Monday and awarded compensatory damages of $3.9 million. Under California law, the question of whether the defendant has acted with malice, fraud or oppression (the prerequisites for a punitive damage award) are decided at the same time the jury decides liability and compensatory damages. But the defendant is entitled to have bifurcation -- i.e., a second phase of trial -- on the question of whether punitive damages should be awarded and how much. Most defendants exercise this right to a two-phase trial, and Kaiser did here.
Here's where it gets interesting. In phase two, Martinucci asked the jury for $1 billion in punitive damages. Most of us would think that's a little on the aggessive side. Conventional defense lawyer wisdom would have it that a request this high risks turning off the jury. But I'm not so sure. There's a very good, albeit rather ponderous study of punitive damages called "Punitive Damages, How Juries Decide," by Cass Sunstein and others. I've read it, so you don't have to. Sunstein and company found that the most significant predictor for a large punitive damages award is a large request. And in fact, there is no limit -- it's like the more the plaintiff attorney asks for, the more he gets. So by asking the jury for a billion bucks, the plaintiff attorney doesn't get a billion bucks. But he gets more, all other things being equal, than he would if he asked for a mere, say $700 million.
And sure enough, Dr. Martinucci was not awarded $1 billion. Only $7.5 million. A verdict, as California Punitive Damages points out, that has a much better chance of sticking on appeal than one for a billion.
In an earlier post, I wrote about contractual fees to the prevailing party, how a one-sided fee provision in a contract becomes bilateral by operation of law, and how a narrow fee provision can relate to all disputes between the parties to a contract. In a second post, I discussed fee awards in civil rights, employment and public interest litigation.
There are scores of fee-shifting statutes in California, many of them dealing with fairly rare and obscure kinds of litigation. But in this post, I’m going to talk about a few of them, roughly in the order of likelihood that a business litigating in this state is likely to encounter them.
The post continues after the jump.
When Can Attorneys' Fees Be Awarded in a FEHA Case?
I am two thirds of the way through a three part post on attorneys’ fees, and have gotten a little bogged down (the pesky details of my law practice have gotten in the way of long posts). At any rate, the first post, on the contractual right to fees, is here. The second, dealing with fees in civil rights, employment and public interest litigation, is here. The final installment will cover fees in consumer litigation, and (I hope) it will be up in the next ten days or so.
Government Code section 12965(b) authorizes an award of reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs “to the prevailing party” in a FEHA action. But, tracking the comparable provisions in Federal Title VII actions and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC (1978) 434 U.S. 412,421, California courts have held that a prevailing defendant can be awarded attorneys’ fees only if the suit is objectively “frivolous, unreasonable or without foundation.” Rosenmann v. Christensen, Miller, Fink, Jacobs, Glaser, Weil & Shapiro (2001) 91 Cal.App.4th 859; Cummings v. Benco Building Services (1992) 11 Cal.App.4th 1383.
In order to ensure that plaintiffs are not unduly punished for asserting their civil rights, Rosenman requires that, before awarding fees to a defendant, the trial court must make findings that the plaintiff is capable of paying. The same holding appears in Jersey v. John Muir Medical Center (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 814, where the court of appeal also reversed a trial court of fees against the plaintiff based on a finding of “no merit” – not the proper standard.
In the recent Villanueva decision, the plaintiff failed to offer evidence of his inability to pay attorneys’ fees other than showing that he earned $25 per hour. The court of appeal held that without such evidence, the trial court’s award of fees could not be an abuse of discretion, effectively placing the burden of proof on this issue, or at least the burden of going forward, on the plaintiff.
Last week, I posted about contractual attorney fee provisions, and situations where a prevailing party could be awarded attorneys’ fees because of a provision in a contract. This week, the subject is the award of fees in civil rights, employment and public interest litigation. This is a long post, so I'm putting the rest of it after the jump. When all three posts are up, I'll probably try to incorporate them all into a white paper.
So as we often say, lots more after the jump.
In the following six years, no California court has issued a published decision involving section 232.5. . . . . until now.

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