The landscape of California PAGA litigation continues to shift. In our previous analysis of the Fifth Appellate District’s decision in CRST Expedited, we discussed the court’s controversial endorsement of “headless” PAGA claims —actions where a plaintiff seeks civil penalties solely for Labor Code violations suffered by other employees, not themselves. The CRST Expedited court interpreted the pre-July 2024 version of the statutory language of PAGA to allow such claims, reading “and” in the phrase “on behalf of himself or herself and other current or former employees” as ambiguous and susceptible to a liberal construction that includes “or.” This interpretation, the court argued, best serves PAGA’s enforcement purpose, even though it again ignored the fact that the legislature could have – but did not – rewrite the statute to explicitly allow “headless” claims by clarifying that it meant “and/or” rather than “and” in the July 2024 amendments to PAGA.
Galarsa v. Dolgen California: Affirming and Extending CRST Expedited
The recent decision in Galarsa v. Dolgen California, LLC, consolidates and extends the reasoning of CRST Expedited. The Galarsa court addressed two key questions: (1) whether the pre-July 2024 version of PAGA authorized “headless” actions, and (2) whether a plaintiff’s status as an “aggrieved employee” must be arbitrated before such a claim can proceed in court.
On the first question, Galarsa unsurprisingly reaffirmed its conclusion in CRST Expedited that “...
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