A state Appellate Court has upheld a lower court ruling involving time rounding claims, finding that common questions must apply for a case to proceed to class action status.
The Third Appellate District decision in Cirrincion v. American Scissor Lift, Inc. was published earlier this month.
“In view of the issues framed by the operative pleading and the class certification briefing, we see nothing inappropriate in the trial court’s rejection of plaintiff’s unsupported assertion that an employer’s practice of rounding employees’ work time violates California law in the absence of a uniform, written rounding policy,” Justice Elena J. Duarte wrote in the unanimous ruling.
“Plaintiff has not cited, and we are not aware of, any authority demonstrating that the trial court improperly articulated the substantive law governing plaintiff’s rounding claim. As the court correctly observed, an employer in California is entitled to round its employees’ work time if the rounding is done in a ‘fair and neutral’ manner that does not result, over a period in time, in the failure to properly compensate employees for all the time they have actually worked.”
The ruling is significant because it addresses a concept that previously might have been viewed as an easy route to secure class certification – the absence of a written policy, professor Thomas Lenz, a lecturer at USC Gould School of Law, told the Northern California Record.
“Just because you don't have something in writing doesn't mean there is a common question that should be resolved in a class action format,” Lenz said. “The absence of a written policy is not itself going to be reflective of an illegal act.”
Lenz noted the decision differs from last year’s state Supreme Court ruling against ‘rounding up’ policies for meal and rest periods.
“Employers can rely on both of these rulings for authority but for different purposes,” Lenz said. “The Supreme Court ruling sends a message that rounding is dangerous when it involves meal periods. But if it's not a common question among employees or among facilities of an employer, if things vary from one to another, that’s going to weigh against the common question needed for a class action.”
The ruling may have been unexpected by attorneys looking to file class actions, assuming that certification would be a slam dunk, said Lenz, who is also a partner handling labor and employment law at Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo.
“And this ruling confirms that details matter – the more differences there are among employees and the issues they raise, the less susceptible the case will be to resolution through a class action,” Lenz said.