SAN FRANCISCO In a win for plaintiff-side labor lawyers, the California Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that employers can be required to turn over a broad array of company records in the early stages of litigation under the state's Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA).
The unanimous decision in Williams v. Marshalls of CA is the first to explicitly deal with the scope of allowable discovery under PAGA, which allows private citizens to sue on behalf of the state over violations of the California Labor Code and carries steep statutory penalties.
The law has been an increasingly valuable tool for the California plaintiffs bar in employment cases since the state high court ruled in 2014 in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles that PAGA claims cannot be routed to private arbitration.
In its decision Thursday, the court held that PAGA plaintiffs have the same broad discovery rights to employer records containing names and contact details for other employees that they would have if the case was filed as a class action. Plaintiffs also are not required to make an increased showing about the merits of their claims or the relevance of the sought documents, the court ruled.
"To allow broad discovery of contact information in one type of representative action but not the other, and impose unique hurdles in PAGA actions that inhibit communication with affected employees, would enhance the risk those employees will be bound by a judgment they had no awareness of and no opportunity to contribute to or oppose," wrote Justice Kathryn Werdegar.
Michael Williams sued the bargain department store Marshalls in 2013 under PAGA alleging that he and other workers were being denied meal and rest periods as a result of understaffing at stores. His attorney, Glenn Danas of Capstone Law in Los Angeles, then sought discovery from Marshalls to obtain the names and contact details of the retailer's other nonexempt employees in the state over a two-year period.
Marshalls objected on a variety of grounds, including that the discovery request for the 16,500 employees was overbroad. The trial judge in Los Angeles ruled that Danas could have limited access to contact information for employees at the one store in Costa Mesa where his client, Williams, worked. But in order to get information from any of the other 130 stores, Williams would first have to sit for depositions so Marshalls could probe the merits of his case.
Danas said in an interview Thursday the high court's decision would allow plaintiffs lawyers to do more thorough reconnaissance on the scope of their PAGA lawsuit early on in the case. "I think the court very powerfully and in unison has reaffirmed the principle that discovery is for the investigation of claims," said Danas, who also litigated the Iskanian case.