Introduction and Overview -

Since the turn of the century, there has been a huge increase in the number of class action lawsuits alleging violations of California’s overtime laws or other Labor Code statutes and wage and hour regulations. Currently, several such class actions are filed every day in California courts.

The reasons for this trend are essentially fourfold. First, California’s wage and hour law differs from federal law in various important ways. This means that an employer might be compliant with federal law, but not California law. Second, California procedural rules make it easier to file a class action or collective action. And the number of representative actions filed under the California Private Attorneys General Act, which are not required to meet class action certification standards, has greatly increased. In contrast, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires an “opt-in” procedure that tends to restrict the size of classes as compared to the “opt-out” class action procedure used in California. Third, California’s unfair competition law allows claimants to borrow violations of other laws and extend the statute of limitations to four years, making class actions more lucrative. Fourth, many California Labor Code provisions allow for the recovery of attorney’s fees to a prevailing plaintiff, creating additional incentives to pursue litigation...