Alvarado v. Amazon.com, Services LLC
- Beth Freeman
- 5:20-cv-07292
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Alvarado v. Amazon.com, Judge Freeman granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss all claims, allowing Alvarado 30 days to amend.
Steven Alvarado and the proposed group of Amazon hourly IT workers in California described in the complaint; Amazon.com, Services LLC.
What happened
In Alvarado v. Amazon.com, Services LLC, Steven Alvarado alleged that Amazon failed to pay proper wages and overtime and interfered with required rest and meal breaks for hourly California IT workers. He also brought related claims involving wage statements, business expenses, terminated workers’ wages, unfair competition, and civil penalties.
Amazon argued that Alvarado’s complaint did not provide enough specific facts. The court agreed, finding that the complaint generally repeated legal requirements without identifying a specific unpaid workweek, break violation, company policy, or unreimbursed expense.
Judge Freeman granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss with leave to amend. Alvarado had 30 days to file an amended complaint; the order stated that failing to meet the deadline or correct the identified problems would result in dismissal with prejudice.
The detailed version
- Alvarado v. Amazon.com, Services LLC · No. 5:20-cv-07292
- Beth Freeman
- Mar. 28, 2022
Background
Steven Alvarado alleged that he worked as a non-exempt IT support technician for Amazon from April 2019 through September 2019. He claimed that Amazon failed to pay him and other hourly IT workers in California the required minimum and overtime wages and that Amazon’s policies prevented timely, uninterrupted, and uncontrolled rest and meal breaks.
The complaint asserted nine claims under California law: failure to pay minimum wages; failure to pay overtime; failure to provide rest breaks; failure to provide meal periods; wage-statement violations; violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law; violations of the Private Attorneys General Act; failure to pay wages owed to terminated or resigned employees; and failure to reimburse business expenses.
Amazon’s Motion
Amazon moved to dismiss all nine claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. Amazon argued that Alvarado did not provide factual allegations showing how or when the alleged labor-law violations occurred.
Court’s Analysis
The court found that the First Amended Complaint contained only one clear factual allegation: that Alvarado worked for Amazon as an IT support technician during the stated period. The court characterized the remaining allegations as conclusory statements that often repeated language from the California Labor Code.
For the unpaid-wage and overtime claims, the court said Alvarado needed to identify at least one workweek in which he worked without receiving required minimum or overtime wages. He did not identify a specific period of underpayment. For the rest- and meal-break claims, he needed to identify a specific Amazon policy prohibiting the breaks or specific instances in which Amazon denied required breaks. He did neither.
The court also held that the wage-statement and terminated-worker wage claims failed because they depended on a viable wage-payment claim. The business-expense claim failed because Alvarado did not identify a specific unreimbursed expense that was within his job duties. The Private Attorneys General Act and Unfair Competition Law claims also failed because they depended on other alleged legal violations that were not plausibly pleaded.
Disposition
The court ordered that Amazon’s motion to dismiss be granted with leave to amend. Alvarado was required to file an amended complaint within 30 days. The order stated that failure to meet the deadline or cure the identified deficiencies would result in dismissal of his claims with prejudice. The court also stated that Alvarado could not add new claims or parties without court permission or Amazon’s consent.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.