The First District Court of Appeal’s recently published decision, Allison v. Dignity Health, is a win for employers holding that broad reliance on time-clock data and expert surveys is insufficient to sustain class-wide liability.
The trial court originally granted certification to a class of Registered Nurses on unpaid work, meal and rest break violation, and derivative claims. The Employer asserted that the employees chose to waive meal and rest periods arguing that there was no commonality among class members because individual inquiries were necessary to ascertain whether employees independently waived their breaks.
The Employer, undaunted, pursued discovery and, after 19 months, sought an order to decertify the class because discovery supported the argument that individualized issues made class treatment unmanageable. The Employer submitted conflicting deposition testimony from numerous class members, which identified a wide variation of employee experiences, including employees’ independent choices regarding their timekeeping and reporting of meal and rest periods. The Employer also argued that a comparison of employee timekeeping records with certain reports and call logs could not be used to establish a class without analyzing such information for each employee. And, the Plaintiff relied on an expert witness declaration that was supported by a survey of less than 15% of the putative class members.
The trial court agreed and decertified the class, echoing the...
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