Johnson v. Siemens Industry, Inc.

Background

Brandon Johnson sued his former employer, Siemens Industry, Inc., on behalf of himself and a proposed nationwide, opt-in group of employees. He alleged that Siemens failed to pay overtime wages in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal wage law.

Johnson was represented by Lebe Law, APLC. In an earlier case, the firm filed a similar Fair Labor Standards Act action in the Central District of California. That case also included state-law claims in related proceedings. The Central District dismissed the federal wage claim without prejudice after finding that the complaint did not plead enough facts. It also found that it lacked jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act over the state-law claims and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over them. Siemens appealed the ruling concerning the state-law claims, but the trial-court case was closed.

The complaint in Johnson’s case asserted substantially the same overtime claim. Siemens moved to transfer the case to the Central District under the federal convenience-transfer statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), and under the first-to-file rule, which can allow transfer, a stay, or dismissal when a similar case was filed earlier in another federal court.

Analysis

For a convenience transfer, the court considered the convenience of the parties and witnesses and the interests of justice, along with factors such as the parties’ connections to each forum, access to evidence, availability of compulsory process, court congestion, and the possibility of coordinating related claims.

The court found that Johnson appeared to reside in the Central District, worked there, and experienced the alleged conduct there. Because the case was a proposed class or collective action, the court also gave less weight to Johnson’s personal choice of forum. The remaining convenience factors did not strongly favor either side.

The court concluded that the first-to-file considerations resolved the motion. Although Johnson was a different named plaintiff, the same law firm was asserting the same claims for the same proposed group. The complaint was nearly word-for-word identical to the earlier complaint, which had been dismissed for failure to state a claim. The court found that Johnson and his lawyers had given no satisfactory reason for filing essentially the same complaint in a different venue instead of amending the earlier case. It found an inescapable appearance of intentionally seeking a different result. The fact that the earlier case was closed did not prevent applying the first-to-file rule because concerns about inconsistent rulings and respect between federal courts remained.

Ruling

The court granted Siemens’s motion to transfer the action to the Central District of California. The court did not decide Johnson’s request for conditional certification of a Fair Labor Standards Act collective or Siemens’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. Instead, it stated that those motions could be re-noticed or refiled after transfer, consistent with the Central District’s rules and any direction from the assigned judge. Judge Richard Seeborg signed the order.