California employment litigators currently feel as if the world is at a standstill. Each and every attorney, whether counsel for defense or plaintiff, is holding their breath. For the last couple of years, plaintiff’s attorneys have had employers over a barrel in litigation, but the Supreme Court of the United States may even the playing field soon. Attorneys and business owners anxiously await the issuance of a decision in the River Viking Cruises v. Moriana case which could be published this month. The relevant issue in the River Viking Cruises case is whether the Federal Arbitration Act requires enforcement of a bilateral arbitration agreement providing that an employee cannot raise representative claims, including under the Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA’).
Employers routinely use arbitration agreements to cover potential claims with their employees in order to avoid the steep costs, delays, and uncertainties of jury trials. Courts in California, however, have refused to order claims brought under PAGA to arbitration. Furthermore, in the last three years, the courts have refused to stay PAGA claims while an employee’s individual claims are pending in arbitration. This has left a gaping hole in jurisprudence, which historically has avoided duplicity of actions. The law has always favored providing a litigant his or her “day in court” (or in these cases, arbitration), but a litigant should only get “their day” once. Under recent jurisprudence, employees are getting...
The National Board of Directors of the Union of Liberian Associations in the Americas (ULAA) hereby alerts the general public to a growing pattern of impersonation, misrepresentation, and the unau...