Droesch v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
- Jacquelyn Corley
- 3:20-cv-06751
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Droesch v. Wells Fargo, Judge Corley denied amendment except to restore Droesch as plaintiff, while her claims remained stayed for arbitration.
The order affects the plaintiffs seeking to amend their complaint and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. Droesch was restored as a named plaintiff, but her claims remain stayed pending arbitration; the proposed additional plaintiffs and new claims were not added.
What happened
In Droesch v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., former employees brought wage-and-hour claims against Wells Fargo in a collective and class action. The plaintiffs asked to amend their complaint again to restore Denise Droesch as a named plaintiff, add Camen Zamarippa and Janisha Lee Price, and add California-law claims.
The court found that the plaintiffs waited too long to seek each proposed change. It also found that allowing the amendment would prejudice Wells Fargo by requiring additional discovery and depositions after substantial discovery had already occurred and shortly before Wells Fargo’s planned summary-judgment motion.
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley granted the motion to amend in part and denied it in part: she allowed the plaintiffs to correct Droesch’s omission from the complaint, but denied the requests to add the two plaintiffs and new claims. Droesch’s claims remain stayed pending arbitration.
The detailed version
- Droesch v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. · No. 3:20-cv-06751
- Jacquelyn Corley
- May 25, 2022
Background
Denise Droesch and Shakara Thompson brought a wage-and-hour collective and class action against their former employer, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. The court had previously ordered arbitration of Droesch’s claims and the claims of certain opt-in plaintiffs, while conditionally certifying Thompson’s collective under Section 216(b) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal wage law. After notice went to a 7,257-person collective, the plaintiffs sought to amend their complaint again.
The proposed second amendment would have (1) corrected the omission of Droesch as a named plaintiff, (2) added Camen Zamarippa and Janisha Lee Price as California representative plaintiffs, and (3) added new California-law claims. Those proposed claims included claims involving meal and rest breaks and unreimbursed expenses associated with working from home.
Legal standard
The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a), which generally directs courts to freely allow amendments when justice requires. But leave to amend may be denied for undue delay, prejudice to the opposing party, bad faith, or futility. The court also noted that its discretion is especially broad when a plaintiff has already had one or more opportunities to amend. It may deny an amendment when the facts supporting the proposed changes were known, or should have been known, earlier.
Court’s analysis
The court found undue delay as to every proposed basis for amendment. Plaintiffs’ counsel had received Zamarippa’s and Price’s names and contact information before filing the prior amendment, and the court found that the plaintiffs could have contacted them then. The court also found that the plaintiffs did not adequately explain why they had not identified the proposed meal-and-rest-break claims earlier. The plaintiffs likewise did not explain why they could not have included the work-from-home reimbursement claim when they previously sought to add the relevant plaintiff.
The court separately found prejudice to Wells Fargo. Since the prior amended complaint, the parties had conducted substantial written discovery and depositions, and Wells Fargo was scheduled to file a summary-judgment motion on June 16, 2022. The proposed amendment would have required a delay, additional document discovery, depositions of the new plaintiffs, and reopening a deposition. The court also found that the plaintiffs had not shown prejudice from denying the new meal-and-rest-period claims based on possible statute-of-limitations concerns because they did not explain those concerns or cite supporting authority.
Disposition
The court stated that it "GRANTS IN PART and DENIES IN PART" the motion to amend. It allowed the plaintiffs to correct the omission of Droesch from the First Amended Complaint and directed them to file the second amended complaint with that change by May 27, 2022. It denied the requests to add Zamarippa and Price and to add the new claims. Droesch’s claims remain stayed pending arbitration. The order disposed of Docket No. 99. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley signed the order.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.