In coming weeks, the California Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on some high-stakes lawsuits with significant potential impacts for employers and the state's economy, including a case involving the Private Attorneys General Act, a controversial law unique to California.
Among cases on its docket is Adolph v. Uber. That case asks the California Supreme Court to reinstate a plaintiff’s ability to pursue another person’s PAGA-related claims in court, even though the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled those provisions of the law aren't compatible with federal arbitration law.
An amicus brief filed Dec. 21 by the Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC) notes that the state legislature has not passed thorough changes to PAGA, which they say are required to bring the state law into line with the U.S. Supreme Court's holdings in its ruling in Viking River Cruises v Moriana.
Hiestand
“Unless PAGA is amended by the Legislature to ‘fix’ its unique and unconstitutional mandatory joinder requirement, this Court should accept Viking’s elimination of a major impediment to the enforcement of individual arbitration contracts,” the brief states.
The SCOTUS found PAGA did not comply with the Federal Arbitration Act.
Adolph v. Uber is the most important PAGA case now before the California Supreme Court, said CJAC General Counsel Fred Hiestand, an attorney on the amicus brief, in an email to the Northern California Record.
“The introduction to this brief describes the importance of the issue and why PAGA and the court’s interpretation of it to date is so vexing to employers and needs to be curbed, as SCOTUS has done in Viking River Cruises,” Hiestand said.
The California Supreme Court Justices also are set to decide Kuciemba v. Victory Woodworks, which involves novel issues emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, including whether an employer can be found liable for a “take-home” case after an employee contracts the virus at work and then gives it to someone at home.
CJAC and many other amicus curiae have filed briefs in the Kuciemba case.
“Kuciemba is important to the future liability of employers sued for COVID-19 infections that spouses or close relatives contract allegedly because employers did not take sufficient measures to prevent employees from contracting it and passing it onto others in their household,” Hiestand said. “If the court imposes such a duty on employers expect a significant uptick in lawsuits and a concomitant increase in the costs of insurance, goods and services in an economy already wracked by hard to control inflation.”
Justice Patricia Guerrero has been confirmed as the new Chief Justice of California, and her term is to start on Jan. 2.