A federal judge has applied new case law regarding manageability of California’s PAGA (Private Attorneys General Act) in a decision involving installation technicians who had discretion over when to take their hourlong meal break within the first five hours of their work shift.
“When it comes to negotiating in mediation, it helps tremendously,” Tom Manzo, founder and president of the California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA), told the Northern California Record. “And the reason is if you have to interview 500 employees and see exactly what time they took their lunches, then it becomes not manageable.”
The decision in Feltzs v. Cox Communications Cal., LLC, issued by Judge James Selna of the Central District of California, applied precedent from the September state appellate court decision in Wesson v. Staples, which found that PAGA claims must be deemed manageable by the court in order to proceed to trial.
When the defendants in Feltzs argued that the case wasn’t manageable, the judge agreed.
Manzo noted a number of elements must be in place to meet manageability requirements.
“It's not like with every PAGA case you can use manageability,” Manzo said. “There has to be some specific things that happen for that to take place. It's a great thing but it's not going to solve PAGA’s problems at all.”
Manzo noted that in certain individual cases, manageability won’t apply in the defense.
“But you'll see a reduction in settlement amounts for cases that would qualify under these conditions of manageability,” Manzo said.
Or Feltzs could curtail the number of allegations put forth because some won’t fall within the rule of manageability.
“If a couple of these things would fall in the category of manageability, it should be brought up right away,” Manzo said.
In Feltzs, the court had already ruled that the case did not meet Rule 23 requirements for a class action and also applied that analysis within the framework of PAGA.
“It should be one of the first questions – can we use manageability as defense?,” Manzo said. “You’ve got the Wesson decision and now Feltzs backs this up.”