Following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (2022) U.S. 639 and the California Supreme Court’s decision in Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal. 5th 1104, when faced with employee arbitration agreements, California trial courts have regularly compelled plaintiffs to arbitrate their individual Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) claims first, while staying their representative, non-individual PAGA claims.
In an attempt to avoid arbitrating the named plaintiffs’ individual PAGA claims – and knowing that the representative, non-individual claims would be dismissed if the employers prevailed in an individual arbitration – more than a few plaintiff’s counsel have tried to circumvent Adolph by asserting that their clients were not bringing individual claims at all, but were only bringing claims on behalf of others.
In response, employers have argued that, based on the clear statutory language, every PAGA action necessarily includes an individual PAGA action such that those individual claims have to be arbitrated first.
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