Seyfarth Synopsis: PAGA claims brought under pre-reform PAGA must be brought within one year of a Labor Code violation experienced by the plaintiff and because a PAGA claim necessarily has both an individual and a non-individual component, failure to do so warrants dismissal.
The Second District affirmed the Superior Court’s dismissal of a PAGA claim where the PAGA notice and lawsuit were both filed more than a year after the plaintiff’s employment with the defendant ended. In doing so, the Second District held that the statute of limitations for a PAGA claim is tied to Labor Code violations allegedly suffered by the named plaintiff (i.e., the “individual” component of the PAGA claim). Therefore, a PAGA claim must be brought within one year of the last Labor Code violation personally experienced by the named plaintiff to be viable. The Court distinguished the holding in Johnson v Maxim Healthcare Services, Inc. that a PAGA plaintiff does not have to suffer a Labor Code violation within the one year statute of limitations in order to proceed with a PAGA case. The Court of Appeal noted that Johnson’s holding was focused only on PAGA’s standing requirements to be a private attorney general – i.e. that an individual must be “aggrieved” and an “employee.” Even if a plaintiff may have standing to be a private attorney general, they still must meet the independent requirements of the statute of limitations. The Court of Appeal further held that PAGA’s purpose of addressing workplace violations “expeditiously” would not be met if an individual could file suit 30 years after a plaintiff left the defendant’s employ because the alleged violations would have continued for years without being remediated or deterred.
The Court’s holding is consistent with the 2024 reform to PAGA, which now specifically requires an “aggrieved employee” to have “personally suffered each of the violations alleged” within one year of filing. However, the Second District’s decision makes clear that the one-year statute of limitations applies to the individual component of PAGA claims for lawsuits filed before the Legislature’s 2024 amendment. The Court of Appeal’s decision is based partly on statutory language requiring that a PAGA action be brought “on behalf of [the PAGA plaintiff] and other current or former employees,” citing with approval Leeper’s reasoning that both an individual and nonindividual component are necessarily part of any PAGA claim. It is important to note that the California Supreme Court recently accepted review of the Leeper decision. While review is pending, however, parties are able to cite to Leeper.
The decision provides additional ammunition to defend against plaintiff’s counsel’s new trend of filing “non-individual only” PAGA claims in an attempt to side step Viking River arbitrations of the individual component of PAGA claims. It also serves to increase importance of compelling the individual portion of a PAGA claim to arbitration so that a plaintiff is required to prove that they personally suffered a Labor Code violation within the statute of limitations before the representative component is litigated in Court.
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