Burrus v. Elevance Health, Inc.

Background

Kikishia Burrus filed a putative wage-and-hour class action in Santa Clara County Superior Court on August 18, 2022. Elevance Health Companies, formerly called Anthem Companies, Inc., and Elevance Health, Inc. removed the case to federal court on September 16, 2022. Burrus alleges that Elevance violated state worker-protection laws by, among other things, failing to reimburse work-from-home equipment, pay for time spent starting and shutting down her computer, provide meal and rest periods, and maintain accurate wage statements.

Burrus stated that she worked remotely for Elevance from homes in Los Angeles, Fresno, and Bakersfield during different periods. The court noted that her allegations about where she lived and worked appeared to conflict with statements in another employment-related state-court action filed against Elevance. The court said that it could not take judicial notice of her Los Angeles citizenship because that issue appeared to be contested. It did find that Burrus currently resided in the Central District and that Bakersfield and Fresno were in the Eastern District.

Elevance moved under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) to transfer the case to the Central District of California. The parties also asked the court to take judicial notice of certain public records. The court granted the requests concerning the existence of the state-court action, a map of California’s federal districts, the existence of related litigation, and the existence of federal court-management statistics, but did not accept disputed facts from those materials as established.

Legal standard

Section 1404(a) allows a federal district court to transfer a civil case to another district where the case could have been brought if transfer would be more convenient for the parties and witnesses and would serve the interests of justice. Courts weigh several factors, including the plaintiff’s choice of forum, the convenience of the parties and witnesses, access to evidence, each court’s familiarity with the applicable law, the feasibility of consolidating related claims, local interest in the dispute, and relative court congestion. The party seeking transfer bears the burden of showing that these factors clearly favor transfer.

Court’s analysis

The court found that the Central District was a proper venue. Burrus lived there, worked there for at least part of the class period, and had filed another employment-related case against Elevance in a state court located there.

The court gave Burrus’s choice of the Northern District substantially less weight for several reasons: the Northern District was not her residence, the conduct underlying her claims occurred in the Central or Eastern Districts, she sued on behalf of a putative class, and her related state-court filing did not support giving substantial deference to the Northern District as her chosen forum.

Convenience for witnesses strongly favored transfer. Elevance submitted declarations stating that Burrus’s supervisors and other relevant witnesses were in the Central District. Burrus did not dispute that her supervisors were located there or that they would need to testify. Potential Elevance policymakers in Indiana and Illinois did not change the analysis because the Northern and Central Districts were equally convenient for those witnesses. The court declined to consider the locations of unnamed putative class members and their possible witnesses because venue is determined based on the named plaintiff, not on speculative participation by absent class members. Burrus’s own residence in the Central District also favored transfer. Access to evidence was neutral.

The court found that both districts were equally familiar with the applicable law and regularly handled similar putative class actions. It also found the possible-consolidation factor neutral because the parties provided insufficient information to determine whether consolidation was feasible. The Central District had a strong local interest because Burrus lived there and at least some underlying events occurred there. The court found the Northern District’s interest less clear, apart from Elevance’s offices and job postings there. Court congestion was neutral because both districts handled significant civil litigation and the submitted statistics were not sufficiently clear.

Ruling

The court concluded that Elevance met its burden to show that convenience and the interests of justice favored transfer. It rejected both parties’ arguments that the case had been filed or that the transfer motion had been made in bad faith. Judge William Orrick granted the motion to transfer venue. The case was ordered transferred to the Central District of California.