Durham v. Sachs Electric Company

Background

William Durham was a former non-exempt employee of Sachs Electric Company at the California Flats Solar Project. He alleged that Sachs did not pay him for all hours worked, including time spent traveling by buggy from the parking lot to the installation site and time during meal periods. Durham asserted several California wage claims, sought to represent other workers, and separately sought civil penalties under California’s Private Attorneys General Act.

Sachs filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings and a motion for partial summary judgment. A judgment-on-the-pleadings motion asks whether the complaint states a legally sufficient claim based on the pleadings. Summary judgment asks whether the undisputed facts require judgment as a matter of law. The court had not yet ruled on Durham’s motion for class certification and deferred that ruling while deciding Sachs’s motions.

Judicial Notice

The court granted Sachs’s request for judicial notice of two collective bargaining agreements covering the project, a union wage-rate sheet, and a Senate committee report. The court found that the agreements’ validity and contents were not disputed.

Meal-Period Claims

Sachs argued that a qualifying collective bargaining agreement exempted the employees from California meal-period requirements. Durham argued that he was seeking unpaid wages for time during which employees remained under Sachs’s control, rather than the separate additional payment available for missed meal periods.

The court concluded that Durham could not avoid the collective-bargaining-agreement exemption by labeling the claim as an unpaid-wages claim. It held that the exemption also barred the related claims based on meal-period violations. The court therefore granted Sachs’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and dismissed Durham’s claims to the extent they were derived from meal-period violations. The court did not decide Sachs’s separate argument that the claims were preempted by the Labor Management Relations Act because it found that issue moot.

Partial Summary Judgment

Sachs also asked the court to rule that two circumstances were irrelevant to whether Sachs controlled Durham during meal periods: whether Durham could leave the project and whether Sachs provided a buggy to return to the parking lot. Durham stated that his claim was not based on an inability to leave the project, and the court treated that issue as uncontested. The court ruled that both whether Durham could leave the project and whether Sachs allowed him to ride in a buggy to the parking lot were irrelevant to whether he was subject to Sachs’s control during a meal period.

The court emphasized that it was not deciding whether Sachs otherwise controlled employees during meal periods. It stated that the degree of control exercised by Sachs remained a triable issue of fact.

Sachs separately argued that a collective bargaining agreement barred Durham’s claim for minimum wages for buggy time between the parking lot and the work site. The court rejected that argument. Relying on California wage-law authority, the court concluded that the applicable wage order required payment for employer-mandated travel time and contained no express exemption from the minimum-wage requirements for that travel. The court therefore denied Sachs’s motion for partial summary judgment as to the buggy-time claim.

Disposition

The court granted Sachs’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. It dismissed Durham’s claims to the extent they were derived from meal-period violations. It granted Sachs’s motion for partial summary judgment as to the irrelevance of Durham’s ability to leave the project and his ability to ride a buggy to the parking lot when evaluating employer control during meal periods. It denied Sachs’s motion for partial summary judgment that Durham’s buggy-time claim was barred by a collective bargaining agreement. The opinion does not state a ruling on class certification.