Source: https://www.uclpractitioner.com/2017/07/supreme-court-confirms-broad-scope-of-civil-discovery-act-williams-v-superior-court-marshalls-of-ca-.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 14:35:10+00:00

Document:
Yesterday, the Supreme Court held that the trial court abused its discretion by placing unreasonable restrictions on the plaintiff's right to seek discovery of percipient witness names and contact information in an action under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act ("PAGA"). Williams v. Superior Court (Marshalls of CA, LLC), ___ Cal.5th ___ (Jul. 13, 2017).
The unanimous opinion by Justice Werdegar (perhaps one of her last opinions before her retirement) confirms principles of civil discovery that will have broad application not only in PAGA cases, but also in class actions and in civil litigation generally.
Our prior decisions and those of the Courts of Appeal firmly establish that in non-PAGA class actions, the contact information of those a plaintiff purports to represent is routinely discoverable as an essential prerequisite to effectively seeking group relief, without any requirement that the plaintiff first show good cause. Nothing in the characteristics of a PAGA suit, essentially a qui tam action filed on behalf of the state to assist it with labor law enforcement, affords a basis for restricting discovery more narrowly.
On its face, the complaint alleges Marshalls committed Labor Code violations, pursuant to systematic companywide policies, against Williams and others among its nonexempt employees in California, and seeks penalties and declaratory relief on behalf of Williams and any other injured California employees. The disputed interrogatory seeks to identify Marshalls’s other California employees, inferentially as a first step to identifying other aggrieved employees and obtaining admissible evidence of the violations and policies alleged in the complaint. The Courts of Appeal have, until the decision in this case, uniformly treated such a request as clearly within the scope of discovery permitted under Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.010. .... [T]he default position is that such information is within the proper scope of discovery, an essential first step to prosecution of any representative action.
In a class action, fellow class members are potential percipient witnesses to alleged illegalities, and it is on that basis their contact information becomes relevant. (Pioneer Electronics (USA), Inc. v. Superior Court, supra, 40 Cal.4th at p. 374; Crab Addison, Inc. v. Superior Court, supra, 169 Cal.App.4th at p. 969; Puerto v. Superior Court, supra, 158 Cal.App.4th at p. 1254.) Likewise in a PAGA action, the burden is on the plaintiff to establish any violations of the Labor Code, and a complaint that alleges such violations makes any employee allegedly aggrieved a percipient witness and his or her contact information relevant and discoverable.
[O]verlapping policy considerations support extending PAGA discovery as broadly as class action discovery has been extended. California public policy favors the effective vindication of consumer protections. (Pioneer Electronics (USA), Inc. v. Superior Court, supra, 40 Cal.4th at p. 374.) State regulation of employee wages, hours and working conditions is remedial legislation for the benefit of the state’s workforce. (Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court (2012) 53 Cal.4th 1004, 1026–1027.) Discovery of fellow consumer or employee contact information can be an essential precursor to meaningful classwide enforcement of consumer and worker protection statutes. (Pioneer Electronics, at p. 374; Crab Addison, Inc. v. Superior Court, supra, 169 Cal.App.4th at p. 968; Puerto v. Superior Court, supra, 158 Cal.App.4th at p. 1256.) Similar state policies animate PAGA. Representative PAGA actions “directly enforce the state’s interest in penalizing and deterring employers who violate California’s labor laws.” (Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, supra, 59 Cal.4th at p. 387; see Arias v. Superior Court, supra, 46 Cal.4th at pp. 980–981.) Hurdles that impede the effective prosecution of representative PAGA actions undermine the Legislature’s objectives. (See Iskanian, at p. 384.) It follows that in PAGA cases, as in the class action context, state policy favors access to contact information for fellow employees alleged to have been subjected to Labor Code violations.
Id. at 9, 11, 15, 16-17 (footnote omitted).
Id. at 20; see also id. at 31.
Id. at 20-21 (emphasis added).
The final section of the opinion discusses the defendant's privacy arguments. Slip op. at 22-32. The opinion explains that the plaintiff was "willing to accept as a condition of disclosure, and share the costs of, a Belaire-West notice to employees affording them an opportunity to opt out of having their information shared." Id. at 26 (citing Belaire-West Landscape, Inc. v. Superior Court, 149 Cal.App.4th 554 (2007)). Under such circumstances, the trial court's order imposing such a condition was appropriate, even though the trial court should have, but did did not, apply the governing balancing test stated in Hill. Id. at 24 (citing Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 7 Cal.4th 1 (1994)).

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