Aguilar v. Walgreen Co.

Background

The plaintiffs are 51 individuals who worked as Walgreens Store Managers in California. They alleged that, despite their job titles, they primarily performed hourly work such as stocking shelves and cashiering. They claimed Walgreen Co. misclassified them as managers and therefore did not pay them for overtime or provide the required number of meal and rest breaks.

The plaintiffs moved to amend their First Amended Complaint to add class-action allegations. Their proposed Second Amended Complaint would have asserted their individual claims and sought to represent a class of people who worked as Store Managers, or functional equivalents, in California.

Parties’ Arguments

The plaintiffs acknowledged that an earlier putative class action involving Walgreens Store Managers, Caves v. Walgreens Co., was pending in the Eastern District of California. They argued that the proposed settlement in that case was inadequate and that its plaintiffs could not adequately represent the class. They contended that they should therefore be allowed to pursue a class action in this case.

Court’s Analysis and Ruling

Judge Chesney held that the proposed amendment was not in the interests of justice because it would create a duplicative class action. The first-to-file rule allows a federal court to transfer, stay, or dismiss a later action when a similar complaint was filed earlier in another federal court. The court found that the earlier case was filed more than a year before this case, involved the same misclassification claim, and involved the same putative classes. In putative class actions, the court compared the proposed classes rather than the individual class representatives.

The court found no equitable reason to depart from the first-to-file rule. It stated that the adequacy of the proposed settlement and the adequacy of the representatives in the earlier case were matters for the Eastern District of California to decide when considering approval of that settlement, not matters for this court to decide on the motion to amend. The court vacated the scheduled hearing and denied the plaintiffs’ motion to amend. The opinion did not decide the merits of the plaintiffs’ underlying wage-and-break claims.