Garcia v. ISS Facility Services, Inc.

Background

Claudia Garcia brought wage-and-hour claims on behalf of herself and similarly situated employees against ISS Facility Services, Inc., ISS Facility Services California, Inc., and Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. Garcia worked for ISS as a janitor and custodian at a Broadridge facility in El Dorado Hills. She alleged that ISS and Broadridge were her joint employers.

Garcia asserted four categories of alleged violations: (1) rounding employee time up or down to the nearest quarter hour, which she claimed resulted in unpaid minimum wages and overtime; (2) failing to pay for time spent clearing security and walking to work areas before shifts; (3) failing to provide required meal and rest breaks, including by requiring employees to remain on the premises during rest breaks; and (4) providing wage statements that did not list total hours worked. She also asserted related claims involving final wages, accurate itemized wage statements, and unfair and unlawful business practices.

Class-Certification Standard

Under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a party seeking class certification must establish four requirements: numerosity, meaning that the class is large enough that joining every person individually would be impractical; commonality, meaning that the class members share legal or factual questions; typicality, meaning that the representative’s claims are typical of the class’s claims; and adequacy, meaning that the representative will fairly protect the class’s interests. The party must also satisfy at least one additional Rule 23 requirement. Garcia relied on Rule 23(b)(3), which requires common questions to predominate over individual questions and a class action to be superior to other methods of resolving the dispute.

Court’s Analysis

The court first found problems with Garcia’s proposed class definitions. Her broad proposal covered all current and former non-exempt ISS employees in California, but it did not clearly explain Broadridge’s role as an alleged joint employer. The court also found that the proposal appeared to assume that all employees experienced all four alleged violations. Garcia’s alternative classes and subclasses were likewise unclear because several subclass definitions duplicated the definitions of their primary classes or duplicated one another.

The court then addressed geographic scope. Garcia had not provided enough information to show that conditions were sufficiently similar across all ISS client workplaces in California to support a statewide class. The court noted that the record included declarations from only two ISS employees at other locations and that Broadridge asserted its security procedures were unique and more time-consuming. The court concluded that, on the record before it, Garcia could not establish a class extending beyond the Broadridge site.

A Broadridge-only class also presented a numerosity issue. Fewer than 40 ISS employees apparently worked at Broadridge during the relevant period. The court stated that this number would likely be just enough to satisfy numerosity, but ISS argued that nearly all of those employees were subject to binding arbitration agreements. The court observed that some employees might later have signed mediation agreements without mandatory arbitration provisions, but it held that Garcia had the burden to establish how many potential class members were not subject to binding arbitration.

The court also found that Garcia had not adequately shown that common issues would predominate, even for a class limited to Broadridge. Garcia argued that payroll and timekeeping records, potentially including statistical analysis, could provide common proof of a pattern and practice of violations. But her expert declaration primarily analyzed Garcia’s own records and showed, at most, how liability might be established for individual employees one at a time. The court found that Garcia had provided little information about how common proof could answer the relevant questions for the class as a whole.

Disposition

The court denied Garcia’s motion for class certification. It also denied Garcia’s motion to strike declarations submitted by ISS, which was based primarily on Garcia’s argument that she had not taken depositions of the declarants. Judge Richard Seeborg stated that the class-certification conclusions did not turn on disputed factual assertions in those declarations.