Williams v. Amazon.com Services LLC

Background

David Williams, an Amazon employee, alleged that Amazon violated California Labor Code section 2802 by failing to reimburse him and other employees for home internet expenses incurred while working from home during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Williams sought certification of a class consisting of nearly 7,000 Amazon employees who worked from home in California at any time from March 15, 2020, through July 1, 2022.

Class certification is the process of allowing one or more people to litigate claims on behalf of a larger group. For a class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3), common questions must predominate over questions affecting only individual class members. The court focused on whether Williams had shown that this requirement was met.

Theories of predominance

Williams’s primary theory was that Amazon had a common written policy, reflected in frequently asked questions on Amazon’s internal wiki and reimbursement software, that limited reimbursement to “incremental” increases in home internet costs and therefore violated section 2802.

The court found that the record did not support Williams’s interpretation of the policy as a common practice. More than 600 of the approximately 7,000 proposed class members received reimbursement for home internet expenses during the class period. The average reimbursement was $66.49 per month, and many employees received reimbursement for their full home internet costs. The court stated that these payments could not be characterized as merely “incremental” and appeared to exceed what California law required in some instances.

Because many employees apparently received reimbursements that complied with section 2802, the court concluded that a dispute over the meaning of Amazon’s written language would not resolve liability for the proposed class as a whole. The evidence also suggested that the written language was not a common policy determining whether, or how much, Amazon reimbursed employees.

Williams’s alternative theory did not depend on a common written policy. It was that Amazon failed to reimburse employees for a reasonable portion of their monthly home internet expenses even though Amazon had actual or constructive knowledge that employees were incurring those expenses. The court said this theory appeared more grounded in the evidence and could potentially support class certification.

The evidence indicated that Amazon recommended that corporate office employees whose roles could be performed from home should work from home. Although that language later became more permissive, Amazon continued to refer to a company-advised work-from-home period in its guidance and reimbursement materials. The court said a possible common question was whether Amazon had to reimburse internet expenses under those circumstances.

Reimbursed employees and ruling

The court nevertheless found that Williams had not adequately addressed the fact that Amazon appeared to have reimbursed a substantial percentage of the proposed class in compliance with section 2802. The court treated this as a liability issue, not merely a damages issue, because Amazon would not have violated section 2802 as to an employee who received a reasonable percentage of the employee’s home internet expenses.

Williams’s counsel suggested excluding employees who received reimbursement from the class. The court declined to change the proposed class definition, noting that some reimbursed employees might still belong in the class if they were reimbursed for only part of the relevant period or received less than California law required. Williams had not analyzed those issues. The court stated that the 619 employees who received home-internet reimbursements could be evaluated without much difficulty to determine which had been sufficiently reimbursed and which had not. Because a substantial, identifiable group of proposed class members appeared to be materially different from the others, the court concluded that certification was inappropriate on the presented record.

Judge Vince Chhabria denied Williams’s motion for class certification without prejudice to filing a renewed motion based on a better presentation, particularly of the alternative theory. The order did not certify the proposed class. The court also scheduled a further case-management conference for March 31, 2023, and required a case-management statement by March 24, 2023.