Santos v. United Parcel Service Inc.

Background

Emilia Santos brought a class action alleging that United Parcel Service Inc. violated California wage-and-hour laws as to non-exempt employees, including Preload Part Time Supervisors. She alleged that UPS failed to provide timely and uninterrupted meal and rest periods, required employees to record meal breaks that they did not actually take, failed to pay required premiums for missed rest breaks, and issued inaccurate or unclear wage statements.

Santos sought certification of six subclasses: unpaid time, meal breaks, meal-break waivers, rest breaks, wage statements, and waiting-time pay. The proposed class covered current and former non-exempt California employees who worked in a distribution center as part-time supervisors or in positions with similar duties or titles and who had not signed an arbitration agreement as of the complaint’s filing.

Santos relied in part on the declaration of expert Bennett S. Berger. Berger analyzed 69,061 shifts for 124 UPS employees. He found that 98.1% of analyzed non-peak shifts longer than six hours showed a recorded first meal break, while 41.9% of shifts longer than six hours lacked a recorded second or third rest break when one might have been required. UPS submitted declarations from employees and supervisors disputing that employees were prevented from taking required breaks.

Class-certification standards

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, a proposed class must satisfy requirements concerning numerosity, common questions, typical claims, and adequate representation. For a class under Rule 23(b)(3), common legal or factual questions must predominate over individual questions, and a class action must be superior to other methods of resolving the dispute.

The court explained that class certification requires evidence of a common issue capable of resolving a central question for the class in one proceeding. In wage-and-hour cases, a consistently applied company policy may support certification. When certification depends on statistical sampling rather than an unlawful written policy, the court must preliminarily assess whether the sample is sufficiently large, random, reliable, and capable of showing a uniform practice.

Unpaid-time, meal-break, and meal-break-waiver subclasses

The court denied certification of the unpaid-time, meal-break, and meal-break-waiver subclasses. Santos had access to information for more than 100 potential class members but submitted declarations from only nine individuals at ten facilities. The court described this as a very small, apparently handpicked sample and found that it did not support an inference of a uniform companywide policy, particularly because UPS submitted contradictory declarations.

The court also noted that Berger’s meal-break analysis showed a high rate of recorded meal-break compliance rather than widespread violations. Santos argued that the records might reflect falsified meal-break entries, but the court found that she offered no statistical or other systemic evidence supporting a widespread, consistent falsification practice.

Rest-break and waiting-time subclasses

The court denied certification of the rest-break subclass. Although Berger’s statistics appeared closer to the type of systemic evidence that could support certification, the court found that the statistics had limited value because UPS did not require employees to record rest breaks. The absence of a rest-break entry could mean either that an employee took the break but did not record it or that UPS failed to authorize or permit the break.

The court concluded that determining the frequency of rest-break violations would require individualized review of timecards and witness testimony. It also found that Santos had not presented evidence of a uniform or pervasive policy requiring employees to work through rest breaks without receiving premiums. Because the waiting-time subclass depended on the rejected unpaid-time, meal-break, and rest-break theories, the court did not certify that subclass either.

Wage-statement subclass

The court certified the wage-statement subclass. Santos alleged that UPS used the same Meal Break Code for meal-break entries and other unpaid-work time in its timekeeping system, making it impossible for employees to determine from their records whether an entry represented an actual meal break. She also argued that meal-premium payments were shown as a lump sum without identifying the hours, number of premiums, or corresponding rate.

The court held that whether UPS’s uniform wage-statement format complied with California Labor Code section 226(a) and Wage Order 9 presented a common question that predominated over individual issues. Santos had provided enough evidence at the class-certification stage to show that the wage statements were potentially ambiguous. The court stated that the method for calculating damages on a classwide basis remained to be determined and required Santos’s counsel to provide a specific trial plan for aggregating damages.

Motions to exclude and disposition

The court denied UPS’s motion to exclude Berger’s declaration. It found that Berger’s experience and data-analysis skills were sufficient to meet the threshold for expert qualification under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. Although the court found limitations in the usefulness of his statistics, it did not find his methodology inherently flawed.

The court also denied Santos’s motion to exclude declarations from potential class members. It found that UPS’s counsel had explained that the attorneys represented UPS rather than the interviewees, disclosed that the employees’ interests could be adverse to UPS, stated that participation was voluntary, and did not provide legal advice.

The court therefore granted in part and denied in part Santos’s motion for class certification, certifying only the wage-statement subclass. It denied UPS’s motion to exclude Berger’s declaration and denied Santos’s motion to exclude the potential class members’ declarations. Judge Edward M. Chen stated that the order disposed of Docket Nos. 64, 67, and 90.