Forsyth v. HP Inc.

Background

Five plaintiffs—Donna J. Forsyth, Arun Vatturi, Dan Weiland, Shafiq Rahman, and Kevin Alviso—alleged that Hewlett-Packard Company, HP Inc., and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company used workforce-reduction plans to target older employees and replace them with younger workers. The complaint asserted claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, and other California laws.

The Fourth Amended Complaint proposed four groups: two nationwide ADEA collective actions, one involving HP Inc. and one involving Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, and two California classes under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. The proposed definitions covered employees aged 40 or older who were terminated under workforce-reduction plans during specified periods. The proposed periods extended beyond the dates on which the named plaintiffs received notices from employment agencies allowing them to sue.

Defendants’ challenge to the proposed groups

The defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) to strike the proposed collective and class definitions and under Rule 12(b)(6) to dismiss them. They argued that the definitions were too broad in time because they included people terminated after the named plaintiffs received their agency notices and included people who had not exhausted administrative remedies.

The court denied the motion to strike. It explained that Rule 12(f) is not a proper method for dismissing all or part of a complaint, and that the defendants’ arguments about the temporal scope of the proposed groups were more appropriately raised through a motion to dismiss.

The court also denied the motion to dismiss the proposed group definitions. First, it held that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(g)(2) barred the defendants from raising an argument that was available but omitted from their earlier motion to dismiss the Third Amended Complaint. The earlier and current complaints involved the same five named plaintiffs, similar allegations that the discrimination was ongoing, and proposed definitions without an end date.

Second, the court held that the argument would fail even if Rule 12(g)(2) did not bar it. The court stated that unnamed members of a private class action do not need to exhaust administrative remedies and may rely on timely administrative charges filed by other members under the single-filing rule. The court found that the complaint and administrative charges alleged an ongoing workforce-restructuring initiative and gave the defendants and agencies notice that the plaintiffs were challenging continuing discrimination. Therefore, the proposed groups were not limited to the dates the named plaintiffs received their notices allowing them to sue.

Unfair-competition and fraud allegations

The defendants argued that the plaintiffs’ claims under California Business and Professions Code section 17200, commonly called the Unfair Competition Law, should be dismissed because the court had previously dismissed the fraud portion of those claims. The plaintiffs clarified that the Fourth Amended Complaint relied only on allegedly unlawful or unfair acts, not on a fraud theory.

The court recognized that the unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent portions of an Unfair Competition Law claim are independently actionable. It treated the plaintiffs’ current claims as relying only on unlawful or unfair acts and denied the defendants’ request to dismiss those claims as moot.

The defendants also asked the court to dismiss or strike other fraud allegations. The court stated that its prior order required those allegations to be stricken. Rather than require another amended complaint, the court ordered the record to reflect that all fraud allegations were stricken from the Fourth Amended Complaint.

Disposition

The court denied the defendants’ partial motion to dismiss and/or to strike. Separately, the court ordered all fraud allegations in the Fourth Amended Complaint stricken. The opinion did not decide whether the plaintiffs ultimately proved age discrimination or whether the proposed groups would eventually be certified.