Hass v. Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal
- 3:25-cv-06018
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Hass v. Flowers Bakeries, the court ordered defendants to explain diversity jurisdiction after finding their amount-in-controversy showing insufficient.
Defendants must explain the basis for federal diversity jurisdiction in Michael Hass’s proposed class action; the order also affects whether the case remains in federal court.
What happened
Michael Hass v. Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal, LLC, et al. is a wage-and-hour class action that defendants moved from state court to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction.
Defendants said the amount at issue for Hass was $152,632, including damages, penalties, and attorneys’ fees. The court found that defendants had not shown the required amount because potential fees had to be divided among the more than 200 proposed class members, which would require a much larger total fee award.
The court ordered defendants to show in writing by November 17, 2025, how federal diversity jurisdiction exists. The court did not yet order the case remanded. The order was signed by the court.
The detailed version
- Hass v. Flowers Bakeries Sales of Norcal · No. 3:25-cv-06018
- Nov. 10, 2025
Background
Michael Hass filed a proposed class action in state court alleging violations of California wage-and-hour laws. Defendants removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, relying on diversity jurisdiction rather than the federal class-action statute. Defendants asserted that the parties were completely diverse and that the amount in controversy for Hass exceeded $75,000.
Jurisdictional Analysis
The court explained that a defendant seeking removal bears the burden of showing that removal is proper. Because the state-court complaint did not clearly establish the amount in controversy, defendants had to prove by a greater-than-50-percent likelihood that the amount exceeded $75,000. The court also noted that it had an independent duty to determine whether it had subject-matter jurisdiction, and that a case must be sent back to state court if jurisdiction is lacking before final judgment.
Defendants estimated Hass’s amount in controversy at $152,632, consisting of $28,282 in damages and penalties and $124,350 in attorneys’ fees. They calculated the fee amount using 150 hours of attorney time at an hourly rate of $829.
The court found that this showing did not satisfy defendants’ burden. In a proposed class action, potential attorneys’ fees must be allocated among the class members. Even assuming Hass’s damages totaled $28,282, the amount attributed to attorneys’ fees would need to be $46,718 for Hass alone. Because Hass estimated that the class included more than 200 people, the total fee award would need to be roughly $9.3 million—equivalent to more than 11,000 hours at the stated hourly rate. The court concluded that defendants had not shown that such an award was likely, noting that the highest number of attorney hours in the cited cases was 869.6. The court also found defendants’ other cited wage-and-hour cases unpersuasive because those cases did not allocate potential attorneys’ fees among all class members as required by Ninth Circuit law.
Order
The court ordered defendants, on or before November 17, 2025, to show in writing how the federal court had removal jurisdiction based on diversity jurisdiction. The opinion did not state that the case had been remanded or otherwise finally disposed of. The judge’s name is not clearly legible in the supplied opinion text, so this summary identifies the signer as the court.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.