In Arias v. Superior Court, 46 Cal. 4th 969 (2009), the California Supreme Court ruled that Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) actions need not satisfy class action requirements, and in the fourteen years since, PAGA plaintiffs have routinely (and often successfully) resisted attempts to apply class action principles to PAGA actions. A recent unpublished California Court of Appeal decision bucks that trend by lending support for an implied adequacy requirement for PAGA plaintiffs and counsel.
In Stone v. Kim, 2023 WL 8011417 (Cal. Ct. App. Nov. 20, 2023), the California Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal of a PAGA claim brought by a plaintiff who sought to prosecute the action in pro per. As the Court explained, a PAGA plaintiff represents the interests of the state labor enforcement agency, so by proceeding in pro per, the plaintiff (who was not an attorney) was engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. Therefore, the trial court properly sustained the demurrer. Id. at *1
The Court could have stopped there. However, it continued by analogizing PAGA actions to qui tam actions brought under the False Claims Act (FCA)—a context it found “instructive.” Id. at *2. The Court cited U.S. ex rel. Rockefeller v. Westinghouse Electric Co., 274 F. Supp. 2d 10, 16 (D.D.C. 2003) for the point that, “[g]iven the potential” for the plaintiff to bind the government in such actions, “the government must have adequate representation,” and therefore, “qualified legal counsel.” Id.
...About this page Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen? IP addr...