Green v. Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal
- Jacquelyn Corley
- 3:25-cv-06679
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 6
In Marwan Green v. Flowers Bakeries Sales, Judge Corley granted remand because the defendant did not prove diversity jurisdiction’s amount-in-controversy requirement.
Marwan Green, Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal, LLC, and the proposed class members are affected because the case will proceed in Alameda County Superior Court rather than federal court.
What happened
Marwan Green v. Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal, LLC is a proposed class action alleging California wage-and-hour violations. Flowers Bakeries removed the case from Alameda County Superior Court to federal court, asserting that the parties were citizens of different states and that more than $75,000 was at stake.
The court granted Green’s motion to remand the case to state court. It ruled that Flowers Bakeries did not prove by a greater-than-50-percent-likelihood standard that the amount in controversy exceeded $75,000. The court said potential attorney fees had to be divided among the proposed class members, and Flowers Bakeries did not show that the resulting amount would meet the threshold.
Judge Jacquelyn Scott Corley issued the order on November 6, 2025. The order disposed of Green’s remand motion and sent the case back to Alameda County Superior Court.
The detailed version
- Green v. Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal · No. 3:25-cv-06679
- Jacquelyn Corley
- Nov. 6, 2025
Background
Marwan Green filed a proposed class action in Alameda County Superior Court against Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal, LLC. He alleged eight California-law claims involving minimum wages, overtime, meal breaks, rest periods, sick pay, wage statements, reimbursement of business expenses, and unfair competition. Green estimated that the proposed classes included at least 100 people.
Flowers Bakeries removed the case to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction, which allows federal courts to hear certain disputes involving parties from different states when more than $75,000 is at stake. The parties did not dispute the requirement that they be citizens of different states. Green moved to remand, arguing that Flowers Bakeries had not shown that the amount in controversy exceeded $75,000.
Ruling
The court granted Green’s motion and remanded the case to Alameda County Superior Court. The court held that Flowers Bakeries had not proved by a preponderance of the evidence—meaning that the claim was more likely true than not—that the amount in controversy exceeded $75,000 for Green or any proposed class member.
Reasoning
Flowers Bakeries estimated the amount in controversy at $119,741, including damages and penalties and anticipated attorney fees. The court did not need to decide whether Flowers Bakeries’ damages assumptions or projected attorney hours were reasonable because a recent Ninth Circuit decision required potential attorney fees in this type of proposed class action to be allocated among the class members rather than attributed only to the named plaintiff.
The court applied that rule to the attorney-fee provisions involved in Green’s claims. With a proposed class of at least 100 people, the court calculated that attorney fees would need to be roughly $5.6 million—more than 8,000 hours at the rate cited by Green’s counsel—to make the amount attributable to an individual class member exceed the jurisdictional threshold. Flowers Bakeries did not show that such a fee award was likely. The court also found the wage-and-hour cases cited by Flowers Bakeries unpersuasive because they did not divide potential attorney fees among all class members.
Disposition
The court granted Plaintiff’s motion to remand to state court, remanded the case to Alameda County Superior Court, and stated that the order disposed of Docket No. 12.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.