Cobos v. Mello-Dy Ranch

Opinion

DRAPER, P. J.

Plaintiff Cobos brings this class action individually and on behalf of all American citizen farm workers who are similarly situated. He alleges that on October 13, 1969 he applied to defendants for employment, but was refused “on the sole ground that [defendants] had sufficient workers,” but that on that day and thereafter defendants’ employees included a substantial percentage of “wetbacks.” He seeks injunction prohibiting defendants’ employment as a farm worker of “any non-citizen not legally entitled to employment in the United States,” and requiring defendants to procure from all its farm employees, before employment, “specific identification as to their legal rights to seek employment in the United States.”

The complaint also seeks money damages, in two categories: (a) for himself individually, “the minimum amount of $20.00 per day from the

[950]

date of defendants’ denial of employment to a time presently unascertainable,” and (b) for “the class of farm worker plaintiffs . . . the aggregate amount of the total number of hours of employment of wetbacks from June 1968, to the present, multipled by the prevailing wage in comparable work among employers not hiring wetbacks.” Defendants’ demurrer to the complaint was sustained without leave to amend, and plaintiffs appeal from the ensuing judgment of dismissal.

Insofar as the complaint seeks injunctive relief, the judgment must be affirmed upon the authority of a decision rendered after judgment in the present case

(Diaz

v.

Kay-Dix Ranch, 9

Cal.App.3d 588 [88 Cal.Rptr. 443]). Plaintiffs meet the citation solely by an attack upon the merits of that opinion. Wholly aside from our agreement with that decision and its result, we deem reconsideration of its merits by us to be foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s denial of hearing in

Diaz.

In attacking

Diaz,