SAN DIEGO Chili’s Grill & Bar parent Brinker International Inc. withstands a likely appeal to the state’s Supreme Court. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
Voiding a trial court’s 2006 decision that an estimated 59,000 to 63,000 current and former employees could join a lawsuit against the Dallas-based company, the California 4th District Court of Appeal ruled July 22 that Brinker only had to “make available” meal and rest breaks to its workers, not to “ensure” the breaks were taken. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
Legal experts who have monitored the landmark San Diego case against Brinker said the appellate ruling could signal a turnaround in a costly legal trend that for years has snared companies in similar litigation, sometimes involving thousands of existing and former employees and huge claims for damages. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
Without admitting guilt, Brinker itself agreed to pay $10 million in August 2002 to settle a similar complaint by California’s labor department on behalf of workers the company employed from October 1999 through the end of 2001. In addition to claims of unprovided breaks, the allegations in that case included Brinker’s purported failure to pay for company uniforms and denial of wage premiums to split-shift workers. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
The still-pending San Diego case against Brinker was filed in August 2004 by five workers, and was certified as a class action in 2006 by county Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
Last month’s decision that the suit can’t continue as a class action “is a dramatic change in wage-and-hour litigation that has been facing California employers,” said attorney Anthony J. Zaller, a partner at Van Vleck Turner & Zaller LLP in Los Angeles. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they would seek a state Supreme Court review of the ruling in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court of San Diego County. If the high court accepts the review, a definitive ruling could take two years or more to reach. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
In a prepared statement, Roger Thomson, Brinker’s executive vice president and general counsel, said: “We are pleased that the court of appeal ruled that the trial court should not have certified a class in this case, and agrees with Brinker’s understanding of the legal standards for providing meal and rest breaks. We look forward to the case’s return to the trial court for action on the remaining individual issues.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
As originally filed, Hohnbaum v. Brinker Restaurant Corp. alleged that the company violated state law by not giving workers meal breaks for every five hours worked or requiring that employees take meals off the clock. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
California legal rulings are influential elsewhere in the United States, said Tom Delorenzo, who chairs the employment practice at the firm of Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin in Philadelphia. “There are two significant parts to the [Brinker] case,” said Delorenzo, whose firm is a member of the newly created National Retail and Restaurant Defense Association. “One is the class-action aspect, and the court here is saying that the matter could not proceed on a class-action basis. Class actions are very expensive for employers to defend, even if they ultimately win.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
The second significant part of the ruling recognized realities of the workplace, Delorenzo said. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
“There are many different reasons why employers may need a little flexibility in [determining] when to provide a rest break,” he said. “It might be very different for a restaurant when they need everybody at a lunch hour, as compared to a plant where they have more regular schedules and [break timing] is not influenced by customer demand.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
California lawyers in the past had gotten little guidance on how courts viewed the “ensuring” of employee lunch breaks, attorney Zaller said. “Everybody had defaulted to the most conservative reading of the law, which was a conservative, strict-liability reading: If any employee worked over five hours, there was an automatic penalty that should be paid to the employee. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
“What this case has done is basically say that, ‘No, all you need to do is make the meal breaks available to employees,’” Zaller said. “If the employee for some reason doesn’t want to take it or voluntarily works through it, it doesn’t create any of these penalties for the employer.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
In matters involving the defense of an employer, the appeals ruling “has shifted the analysis from just looking at the payroll records and adding up violations” to determine monetary damages, Zaller said. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
“That’s what the plaintiffs had argued as to how to do the analysis,” he said. “[However] what this court says is that you really need to look at each employee who has missed a meal break and look at why they missed it. Did they do it voluntarily? Was it because the employer didn’t have enough staffing and they felt they had to work through it? Did they just take a short meal break, feeling like they didn’t need the full 30 minutes? It goes into the voluntary aspect of it. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
“The court said we have to look at each violation and see what was going on behind that violation,” Zaller continued. “Because of that, these cases aren’t amenable to class action or class by treatment because of that individualized inquiry that you have to do now. That shifted the standard.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
Zaller said class actions over wage-and-hour issues also affect operations far smaller than the nearly 1,800-unit Brinker system, which employs some 120,000 people. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
“If you have 50 or more employees, potentially you’ve got class-action liability,” he said. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
However, if the appellate decision favoring Brinker “sticks and holds true, we’re definitely going to see a decrease in these wage-and-hour lawsuits for meal and rest break violations.” Assuming the decision stands, an employer wouldn’t “have to be so strict about enforcing the meal breaks at the fifth hour,” he said. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
“Up until now, they have been requiring employees to clock out before the fifth hour,” he said. “If the employee didn’t clock out, some employers have been writing up the employees and firing them on their third or fourth violation. They didn’t want to incur the potential liability.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
However, pending a possible state Supreme Court review of the appellate decision, employers in California face lingering uncertainty, Zaller said. Not knowing how the high court might view the appellate ruling “really creates this void,” he said. “Companies sued in these class actions will be in a little bit of a limbo state. —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
However, Mark Wilbur, chief executive of Employers Group, an advocacy organization that filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Brinker’s behalf, said: “‘This is a big victory for employers that culminates a six-year battle, during which several class actions were filed daily. Had the court ruled differently, the cost to employers would have been devastating.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a statement about the ruling in favor of Brinker, said it “promotes the public interest by providing employers, employees, the courts and the labor commissioner the clarity and precedent needed to apply meal and rest period requirements consistently.” —California’s tsunami of class-action lawsuits against restaurants over wage-and-hour issues could be quelled if an appeals court ruling here favoring
