Court Opinion

ID: 9569301
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:12:33.841583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:53:07.722067
License: Public Domain

CALLAHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from Judge Silverman’s opinion on compensation for commuting under state law:
Rutti contends that even if his commute is not compensable under ECFA, it is compensable under California law pursuant to Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 3, 995 P.2d 139 (2000). He asserts that in Morillion, the California Supreme Court adopted a standard more favorable to employees “by merely requiring that the worker be subject to the ‘control of the employer’ in order to be entitled to compensation.”
The “control of the employer” standard set forth in Morillion may be more favorable to employees than federal law, but it does not cover Rutti’s commute. In Morillion, the employer required the employ*1065ees “to meet at the departure points at a certain time to ride its buses to work, and it prohibited them from using their own cars.” Id. at 587, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 3, 995 P.2d 139. The court held that under California law, the employees’ “compulsory travel time, which includes the time they spent waiting for [the employer’s] buses to begin transporting them, was compensable,” but “the time [the employees] spent commuting from home to the departure points and back again is not.” Id. at 587-88, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 3, 995 P.2d 139. Here, Rutti’s use of Lojack’s automobile to commute to and from his job sites is more analogous to the “home to departure points” transportation in Morillion than to the employees’ transportation on the employer’s buses.1
My review of subsequent cases construing California law fails to reveal any case extending Morillion to cover Rutti’ situation. In Overton v. Walt Disney Co., 136 Cal.App.4th 263, 271, 38 Cal.Rptr.3d 693 (2006), the court held that time spent by an employee on an employer-provided shuttle bus from the employer-provided parking lot to the job site was not compensable because employees were not required to use the parking lot or to take the shuttle. In Burnside v. Kiewit Pacific Corp., 491 F.3d 1053 (9th Cir.2007), we read Morillion as covering “employees for time spent traveling from designated meeting points to their job sites and back” in company provided vehicles. Id. at 1070. There was no suggestion that the employees were entitled to compensation for commuting to the designated meeting points. The decision in Ghazaryan v. Diva Limousine Ltd., 169 Cal.App.4th 1524, 87 Cal. Rptr.3d 518 (2008), similarly concerned time spent by limousine drivers between calls, not the time spent commuting from home to their first assignments. Furthermore, our reading of Morillion is consistent with California Labor Code § 510(b), which provides that “[t]ime spent commuting to and from the first place at which an employee’s presence is required by the employer shall not be considered to be a part of a day’s work, when the employee commutes in a vehicle that is owned, leased, or subsidized by the employer and is used for the purpose of ridesharing.”2
Accordingly, I dissent from Judge Silverman’s opinion and would hold that the district court properly held that Rutti is not entitled to compensation for the time spent commuting to and from his job sites in a vehicle provided by Lojack under either 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)(2) or California law.

. I note that in Morillion, the California Supreme Court stated: "we emphasize that employers do not risk paying employees for their travel time merely by providing them transportation." 22 Cal.4th at 588, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 3, 995 P.2d 139. Although Rutti was required to drive the company vehicle, he was free to determine when he left and his route.

. " 'Ridesharing' means two or more persons traveling by any mode, including, but not limited to, carpooling, vanpooling, buspooling, taxipooling, jitney, and public transit.” Cal. Veh.Code § 522. If the provision of a vehicle by the employer for commuting does not constitute part of a day's work when the employee has to share the vehicle with other employees, it follows that it should not constitute part of a day's work when the employee’s use of the employer-provided vehicle is freed of such a limitation.