By: Kerri N. Kramer and Francesca Gonzales The California Supreme Court recently held that an aggrieved employee bringing an action under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) cannot intervene in another PAGA action with overlapping claims or object to a proposed settlement.
In Turrieta v. Lyft, Inc., a settlement was reached after an employee sought relief under PAGA for misclassification, failure to pay overtime, and failure to reimburse business expenses. Two nonparties, who had overlapping PAGA claims against Lyft in other cases, objected to the settlement. The trial court approved the settlement and determined that the nonparties were not entitled to object to the settlement, intervene in the case, or move to vacate the judgment. The nonparties appealed and the Court of Appeal affirmed the prior ruling.
The California Supreme Court granted review and affirmed the Court of Appeal’s judgment. The Court ultimately held that “an aggrieved employee’s status as the State’s proxy in a PAGA action does not give that employee the right to seek intervention in the PAGA action of another employee, to move to vacate a judgment entered in the other employee’s action, or to require a court to receive and consider objections to a proposed settlement of that action.”
The Court found that the nonparties’ intervention “is inconsistent with the scheme the Legislature enacted and for that reason, outside the scope of [their] authority to commence and prosecute a PAGA action on the state’s behalf.” The court found that the nonparties could not establish a cognizable interest to support their intervention under Code of Civil Procedure section 387.
As to the nonparties’ motion to vacate the judgment, the Court stated that there are no PAGA provisions that reference a power to make this motion in another aggrieved employee’s PAGA action asserting overlapping claims. The Court found that it would be inconsistent with the statutory scheme as a whole to find this as an implied power.
Lastly, the Court found that courts are not required by section 187 of the Code of Civil Procedure to receive and consider objections to a proposed settlement, such as the proposed settlement from the Turrieta action. Instead, the Court stated that the statute grants courts the discretion to “create its own reasonable procedure in the exercise of its jurisdiction where the law provides no specific procedure.”
Kerri N. Kramer is a Partner specializing exclusively in employment law. Her primary work involves helping keep employers out of PAGA and similar actions, but she also helps defend them when such claims cannot be avoided. She can be reached at (949) 393-1400 or [email protected]. Francesca Gonzales is a law clerk at the Firm.