End the year with Bridgeport's Wage & Hour Litigation Conference

Bridgeport will hold its annual Wage & Hour Litigation & Management Conference on December 9, 2016, at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.  Listen to a diverse faculty as they discuss recent, major developments in wage & hour class action litigation, including Spokeo v. Robins, PAGA, and other issues.

Dear Twitter, pull your head out

I customarily cross-post to Twitter when I write a new post here.  That may change soon.  The evidence I have examined is strongly suggestive that Twitter engages in viewpoint-based censorship by asserting its "standards" in a very non-uniform manner.  Twitter is a private company.  They can do this.  But I can vote with my feet if Twitter doesn't want to remain neutral in viewpoint suppression.  As a blogger, and irrespective of personal views of the speaker, I am sensitive to the long-term, dire consequences that will result if large businesses and/or governments succeed in limiting expression of entire swaths of opinions.  I was particularly disturbed when I read that Twitter had blocked the account of Glenn Reynolds, a pioneering law/politics/current events blogger known as Instapundit.  He made an ill-considered point in a rather rough way, but, at the same time, individuals advocating the murder of police officers go unpunished.  This is unjustifiable if one assumes that Twitter is viewpoint neutral in its censoring.

I don't approve of or condone all of the messages that have resulted in some high-profile account banning of late on Twitter, but the simple fact is that Twitter has permitted far worse commentary to remain on Twitter without consequence.  Maybe this behavior explains, in part, why Twitter is likely up for sale.

Another PAGA versus arbitration decision, this time from the Second Appellate District in Perez v. U-Haul Co. of California

Law is driven as much by unforeseen consequences as it is by any rational planning. The Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) is exhibit one.  Over the last five or so years, inexorable advance of the Federal Arbitration Act looked as if it would cut a fatal swath through many class actions. But, somewhat unexpectedly, PAGA has served as a counterpoint in the wage & hour sector.  In Perez v. U-Haul Co. of California (Sept. 16, 2016), the Second Appellate District, Division Seven, affirmed the trial Court's ruling that U-Haul could not assert an arbitration agreement to compel the plaintiffs to individually arbitrate whether they qualified as “aggrieved employee[s],” to determine in arbitration whether they had standing to pursue a PAGA claim.

The Court agreed with Williams v. Superior Court, 237 Cal. App. 4th 642 (2015), which also held that California law prohibits the enforcement of an employment agreement provision that requires an employee to individually arbitrate whether he or she qualifies as an “aggrieved employee” under PAGA, and then (if successful) to litigate the remainder of the “representative action in the superior court.”  Slip op., at 11-12.  The Court concluded by dismissively rejecting the notion that the FAA can apply to claim belonging to a governmental entity or its designated proxy.

Gregg A. Farley, of the Law Offices of Gregg A. Farley, and Sahag Majarian, of the Law Offices of Sahag Majarian, represented Plaintiff and Respondent Sergio Lennin Perez; Larry W. Lee and Nicolas Rosenthal. of the Diversity Law Group, and Sherry Jung, of the Law Offices of Sherry Jung, represented Plaintiff and Respondent Erick Veliz.

Ninth Circuit examines arbitration and PAGA claims in Mohamed v. Uber Technologies, Inc.

The Ninth Circuit tackles a complicated set of arbitration issues in Mohamed v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (9th Cir. Sept. 7, 2016).  Among other things, the panel held that the District Court erred when it decided the question of arbitrability, since the question of arbitrability was delegated under the agreement to an arbitrator.  But the panel agreed that the defendants could not compel arbitration of the PAGA claim asserted in the case, severing that claim for further proceedings in before the trial court.  Finally, the panel agreed that a separate defendant not party to the arbitration agreement could not assert a right to enforce the agreement as an agent of Uber.

Everything old is new again, but upside down and backwards

The RICO Trend in Class Action Warfare looks at the use of RICO suits against plaintiffs' counsel in mass action and class action filings, concluding that the tactic incorrectly attacks aggregate litigation procedures rather than specific, underlying fraudulent conduct.

That's right -- common fund attorney fee awards can be calculated as a percentage of the fund

I take this opportunity to say I told you so.  "We clarify today that when an attorney fee is awarded out of a common fund preserved or recovered by means of litigation (see Serrano III, supra, at p. 35), the award is not per se unreasonable merely because it is calculated as a percentage of the common fund."  Laffitte, et al. v. Robert Half International, Inc., et al., at p. 2 (August 11, 2016).  See the rest if you have the time, but this should put an end to the spreading nonsense that lodestar is the method for calculating fees in common fund class action settlements.

The Proposed Arbitration Regulations from the CFPB

If you have insomnia or just want to test the lower bounds of your will to live, you can view the text of the proposed rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (along with about 350 pages of commentary before you actually get to the proposed rules - it's a lot like the longest law review article you've ever read).

The Proposed Rules

Chamber of Commerce concerned over proposed regulation that would prohibit class action bans in consumer agreements

Nothing says Cinco de Mayo like arbitration. I have no idea what that means, so don't ask.  Anyhow, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will propose a regulation today that will ban contract terms that prohibit consumers from filing class action lawsuits.  And the Chamber of Commerce is none to happy about this development.  You can read the details at politico.com, which posted an opinion piece by Lisa A.Rickard, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform and David Hirschmann, the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.  If you don't have time to read the article, allow me to paraphrase: "Damn trial lawyers! Get off my lawn!"