Plaintiff’s Motion for Approval of Class Settlement
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4. Counsel’s valuation of the regular rate claim is confusing. Per ¶ 19 of counsel’s declaration, the expert calculated Defendant’s maximum exposure as $10,835. Counsel testifies he discounted this by 50%, which results in a realistic value of $14,523.50—more than the expert’s maximum. Moreover, the chart at ¶ 18 gives a realistic value of $2,708.78 for the regular rate claim, which is about 25% of the expert’s maximum, not 50%. What is the correct valuation?
5. The reimbursement claim is based on cell phone and vehicle use. In Plaintiff’s personal experience, he regularly used his phone to communicate with management and clients, and he used his truck to take Defendant’s packages to UPS. Again, Plaintiff was a supervisor. Did non-supervisorial employees regularly communicate with management and clients via cell phone, or use their personal vehicles to take packages to UPS?
6. Does the UCL claim have any independent value, or does it simply extend the limitations period?
7. At final approval, please submit contemporaneously made billing records for attorney’s fees and costs. The Court will not be inclined to award an amount of fees and costs greater than the amount stated in the notice.
8. At final approval, please submit billing records for administrative costs. The Court will not be inclined to award administrative costs in an amount greater than the amount stated in the notice.
9. Because Plaintiff has submitted a declaration in support of his requested enhancement payment, he need not submit one at final approval.
10. At final approval, the administrator is to provide a high, low, and average for individual settlement payments, along with Plaintiff’s individual payout.
As to the Notice: 1. The draft notice includes opt-out and objection forms. Please omit the objection form, and please add a workweek dispute form. (That is, the notice should include only opt-out and workweek dispute forms, not an objection form.) In addition, please make corresponding changes to the text of the notice.
2. Does notice need to be given in any languages other than English and Spanish?
3. If any changes are made to the settlement agreement, please make corresponding changes to the notice.
4. The font size in the actual notice may not be smaller than the font size in the proposed notice provided to the Court.
2 Ortiz vs. West Coast University, Inc., a California corporation
2024-01433416
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the LWDA.
1. The motion is principally supported by a declaration from attorney Dalia Khalili. Ms. Khalili is not on the caption for this case, and per her own testimony, the only attorneys who billed time to this matter were Launa Adolph and Ellie Goralnick. How does Ms. Khalili have foundation to testify to anything set forth in her declaration, especially the valuation of the PAGA claims?
2. Paragraph 9 of the complaint appears to define the aggrieved employees as all of Defendant’s non-exempt employees, but the agreement defines them as non-exempt clinical nursing instructors. What is the reason for this change?
3. How many pay periods were actually worked by the aggrieved employees? Ms. Khalili states there were approximately 22,000 pay periods at issue, but the figures in the valuation don’t match this total. For example, counsel estimates that 65% of pay periods had off-the-clock work violations. 65% of 22,000 is 14,300, but counsel says there are 7,498 pay periods with off-the-clock work.
4. How large a sample of time and pay data did Defendant turn over (e.g., 10%)? What steps were taken to ensure it was representative of the aggrieved employees across the PAGA period?
5. Did counsel interview anyone other than Plaintiff regarding nonrecord claims?
6. An expert was retained to assist in valuing the claims. Whom? Please provide a CV.
7. A notice is supposed to be attached to the settlement agreement as Exhibit 1. The copy attached to Ms. Khalili’s declaration has no attached notice. Please provide a draft notice for the Court’s review.
8. Does notice need to be given in any languages other than English?
3 SALDIVAR TORRES vs. GMRI, INC.
2024-01434800
Plaintiff’s Motion for Approval of Settlement
The Court has reviewed the supplemental briefing filed in response to the prior minute order. The motion for approval of the parties’ PAGA settlement is GRANTED. The Court finds the parties’ settlement is “fair, reasonable, and adequate in view of PAGA’s purposes to remediate present labor law violations, deter future ones, and to maximize enforcement of state labor laws.” (Moniz v. Adecco USA, Inc. (2021) 72 Cal.App.5th 56, 72.) The Court approves the following distributions: 1. Attorneys’ fees in the amount of $1,293,333, or 33.33% of the GSA. The Court finds this amount to be a reasonable result in light of the quality of the result obtained, the work performed by counsel, and the estimated lodestar. In approving this amount, the Court is not approving any particular hourly billing rates proposed by counsel.