In Kirby v. Immoos Fire Protection, Inc., the California Supreme Court held that neither California Labor Code section 1194 nor section 218.5 authorize the payment of attorney fees in an action seeking recovery for denial of required rest breaks under section 226.7.

Section 1194 authorizes recovery of attorney fees by a prevailing employee on a claim for unpaid minimum or overtime wages.  It provides for one-way fee-shifting to plaintiffs.

Section 218.5, by contrast, provides for attorney fees to be paid to the prevailing party in any action brought for the nonpayment of wages, fringe benefits, or health and welfare or pension fund contributions.  It is thus a two-way fee-shifting statute.  However, it is also limited, since it does not apply to any action for which attorney’s fees are recoverable under section 1194.

Section 226.7 imposes an obligation upon employers to provide mandated meal and rest breaks.

Plaintiffs, employees of Defendant (“IFP”), sued the employer for nonpayment of mandated rest breaks, but subsequently dismissed this claim.  IFP sought roughly $50,000 of attorney fees for successfully defending this claim.

The first question the Supreme Court had to address was whether attorney fees would have been recoverable under 1194. The Supreme Court found that fees would not have been recoverable under 1194, since rest breaks do not constitute a type of “minimum wage,” as Plaintiffs had argued.

The second question was whether, in that case, attorney fees were recoverable under the two-way fee-shifting of section 218.5.  Here, it was IFP that argued that non-payment of rest breaks constituted a “wage,” and therefore qualified under section 218.5.  Again, the Supreme Court disagreed.  Rest breaks do not constitute wages of any kind.

Thus, the Court held, attorney fees were not recoverable in actions seeking mandated rest breaks under section 226.7.

What makes this case interesting (and a little ironic) from a procedural standpoint is that it was the defendant employer seeking the attorney fees, and the employee plaintiffs who resisted.  Thus, in losing their claim for attorney fees, the employer ended by establishing law generally advantageous to employers.  And in winning this battle over the payment of roughly $50,000 in fees, the employees essentially nullified the ability of future plaintiffs to seek attorney fees in actions based on the denial of required rest breaks.