Estorga v. Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority

Background

Robert Estorga brought a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal law governing matters including overtime pay, on behalf of bus drivers for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). The plaintiffs claimed that two types of travel time counted as compensable work: travel when a driver began and ended a shift at different locations, and travel between runs during a split shift.

On January 4, 2019, the court granted VTA partial summary judgment. It ruled that start-end travel time was not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act, while split-shift travel time was compensable.

The plaintiffs then sought further limited discovery, additional expert disclosures concerning damages, and a new trial date. They requested, for each plaintiff, weekly timekeeping summaries, employee activity sheets, and information about travel time VTA paid for travel to or from relief points and bus divisions. They said their expert could not calculate split-shift travel time, and therefore could not calculate damages for several plaintiffs, without those materials.

VTA opposed the motion. It argued that the plaintiffs had to show good cause under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(b) to change the case schedule and had not done so.

Court’s Analysis

The court held that the plaintiffs had not shown the required diligence. Fact discovery closed on June 2, 2018, and expert disclosures were due on July 31, 2018, with expert discovery closing on September 21, 2018. The plaintiffs did not request the disputed documents until March 29, 2019—nine months after fact discovery closed—and did not provide VTA with their damages expert’s report until May 20, 2019, nearly ten months after the initial expert-disclosure deadline.

The plaintiffs argued that VTA should already have produced the documents and should have supplemented its disclosures after additional plaintiffs joined the case. The court concluded that, if the plaintiffs believed VTA’s discovery responses were inadequate in 2017 or 2018, they should have raised the dispute then through the proper discovery-motion process. The court also concluded that the plaintiffs had ample time to seek the documents and disclose an expert under the existing schedule.

The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the earlier summary-judgment ruling supplied good cause. The court reasoned that the complaint identified both types of travel-time claims, so the possibility that only one type would remain compensable was foreseeable. The court also found that reopening discovery would cause VTA additional litigation expenses, including expenses related to deposing the plaintiffs’ expert and possibly retaining additional experts. That prejudice provided an additional reason to deny the motion.

Disposition

The court denied Plaintiffs’ Motion for Further Limited Discovery and Expert Disclosures. It set a case-management conference for December 5, 2019, at 11:00 a.m., to discuss trial dates. The court also struck the plaintiffs’ nonconforming footnotes and pages 11 and 12 of VTA’s brief, and warned that it would strike entire nonconforming submissions in the future.