In a recently issued 8 to 1 Decision in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, the United States Supreme Court held that individual claims based on the “only in California” Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) may be compelled to arbitration. For those unfamiliar with the California PAGA statute, it is a unique state law that empowers employees to act as private attorneys general or agents of the state to bring civil lawsuits on behalf of themselves, other aggrieved employees, and the State of California for various Labor Code violations.
In Viking River Cruises, a former sales agent, Angie Moriana (Moriana), agreed to arbitrate all disputes arising during her employment relationship and waived her right to bring class-wide, representative, or PAGA claims. However, despite her agreement, after her employment ended, Moriana brought a PAGA claim against her employer in state court in California, alleging various Labor Code violations affecting her and other aggrieved employees. The Court of Appeal found Moriana’s arbitration agreement to be unenforceable and allowed the case to proceed forward in accord with the California Supreme Court’s decision in Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles (2014) 59 Cal.4th 348, that attempted waivers of representative PAGA claims in an individual employee’s arbitration agreement were invalid because such claims could not be divided into “individual” and “representative” claims brought in separate proceedings. Thereafter, the US Supreme Court...
The SEC is accusing a Florida fund manager of pocketing seven times his allowed fees and misrepresenting investment holdings to mislead investors. In a complaint filed in the Middle District of Fl...