On July 17, the California Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Adolph v. Uber Technologies. California plaintiffs will continue to have standing to litigate certain claims on behalf of other employees even if compelled to arbitration. In light of the opinion, California employers should cautiously consider whether to arbitrate individual wage and hour claims when a related representative claim is pending in court.
Last year, the US Supreme Court held in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana that if a plaintiff’s individual wage-and-hour claims were compelled to arbitration, the plaintiff lost statutory standing to pursue a representative claim under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 in court until there was a finding in the arbitration that the employee was “aggrieved.”
For a short period after Viking River, employers quickly moved to compel plaintiffs’ individual wage-and-hour claims to arbitration and dismiss the representative PAGA claims in court. However, courts were hesitant to comply with Viking River, and instead, the majority of courts opted to stay the PAGA claims pending resolution of the individual claims in arbitration.
Against the backdrop of this apparent conflict between the Viking River decision...
Images of the Whitegate fuel protests earlier this month were altered to make it appear gardaí were violent towards protesters. The AI-doctored images were shared widely online, including by inter...