Garcia v. ISS Facility Services, Inc.

Background

Claudia Garcia worked for ISS Facility Services, Inc. and ISS Facility Services California, Inc. as a janitor and custodial detailer from approximately May 2018 through August 2019. She worked at a facility in El Dorado Hills owned and operated by Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., an ISS client. Garcia alleged that ISS and Broadridge were her joint employers, but she clarified that her renewed motion did not seek certification of claims against Broadridge.

Garcia’s renewed motion concerned claims that ISS employees were not consistently provided full meal breaks or required additional compensation; were not provided legally compliant rest breaks because they could not leave the premises; were not paid for time spent clearing security and walking to their work areas; and were not reimbursed for required use of personal cell phones. She also identified related claims involving final wages, wage statements, and allegedly unfair or unlawful business practices.

Legal standard

The court applied Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. A party seeking class certification must show numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy under Rule 23(a), and must also satisfy at least one requirement under Rule 23(b). The relevant Rule 23(b)(3) requirements were predominance—whether common questions outweigh individual ones—and superiority—whether a class action is the best available method for resolving the dispute.

Analysis

Numerosity. The court had previously required Garcia to provide an affirmative showing about how many potential class members were not subject to binding arbitration agreements. The court ordered ISS to provide information about the total number of employees at the relevant worksites and the number who had arbitration agreements that were not later replaced by mediation agreements.

ISS provided employee totals and the number of employees with arbitration agreements, but it did not provide the required information about employees who later signed mediation agreements. The court therefore found that Garcia had met her burden to establish numerosity at that stage and that ISS had not shown that arbitration agreements applied to enough employees to defeat numerosity. At the El Dorado Hills site, there were just under 40 employees, and ISS showed that up to 27 may have signed arbitration agreements. The court warned that the class might later fall below the required size and stated that ISS would bear the burden if it sought to decertify the class for insufficient numerosity.

Geographic scope. Garcia did not provide enough evidence that conditions were sufficiently similar across ISS’s various California worksites. Her declarations were considered conclusory and vague, and additional declarations from employees at other sites did not adequately support a statewide class. The court therefore denied certification beyond the El Dorado Hills facility.

El Dorado Hills claims. The court found that Garcia had adequately addressed the earlier concerns about commonality and predominance for the El Dorado Hills site.

For the meal-break claims, Garcia showed that ISS’s records frequently did not accurately record meal breaks and that ISS used an automatic deduction policy that treated employees as having taken a 30-minute meal break when no break was recorded. Under the California Supreme Court’s rule discussed in the opinion, that showing shifted to ISS the burden of presenting evidence that employees were given compliant breaks or were properly compensated. ISS had not presented the representative testimony, surveys, statistical analysis, or similar evidence needed to rebut that showing.

The court found that whether ISS’s policy requiring employees to remain on the premises during rest breaks was lawful could be decided on a class-wide basis. It likewise found that whether ISS improperly denied compensation for time spent clearing security checks could be addressed on a class-wide basis, even if damages differed among employees. Although Garcia presented little evidence that employees were required to use personal cell phones for their jobs, the court found that whether such use was required and whether reimbursement was owed could also be resolved on a class-wide basis.

Other motions and disposition

The court denied ISS’s request to file a sur-reply concerning the additional employee declarations. The court stated that whether the employees had arbitration agreements was not the only issue, because it also mattered whether those agreements were later replaced by mediation agreements. The court also stated that the certification ruling was without prejudice to later reconsideration of the wording of the class definitions, particularly if the case were presented to a jury.

Result

Chief United States District Judge Richard Seeborg granted in part and denied in part Garcia’s renewed motion for class certification. Certification was limited to the proposed classes of ISS employees at the El Dorado Hills facility operated by Broadridge. The court did not certify a statewide class. ISS could seek decertification based on insufficient numerosity within 60 days, but it would have to show that the arbitration agreements it relied on were not superseded by mediation agreements.