Two recent Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) cases underscore the importance of effectively using procedural motions in defending such cases.
1. Rodriguez v. Packers Sanitation Services LTD., LLC
The first case, Rodriguez v. Packers Sanitation Services LTD., LLC, involved the question of arbitrability in a so-called “headless” PAGA action. In a headless PAGA action, the plaintiff seeks to avoid arbitration by filing a complaint that asserts a PAGA claim solely on behalf of others while the PAGA plaintiff disclaims any individual claim for relief that would be subject to an arbitration.
In Rodriguez the California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal held that, in such cases, trial courts cannot order arbitration of the unasserted individual PAGA claims even if it is true that an individual PAGA claim is a necessary component of every PAGA action.
This decision is odds with the Second District Court of Appeal’s recently published decision in Leeper v. Shipt. In Leeper the appellate court held that trial courts may compel arbitration of unasserted individual PAGA claims because the court concluded that every PAGA action necessarily includes an individual PAGA claim. (For further analysis on Leeper see our prior blog post.)
The Rodriguez decision does not create a split of authority on the issue of whether every PAGA action includes an individual PAGA claim; the appellate court expressly declined to consider that issue. Instead, the Rodriguez decision concludes that trial...
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