Scott Tillett

When Tillett was working on what would become one of his most important cases of the year, his colleagues in the plaintiffs’ employment bar kept telling him he was going to lose. It’s obvious, they would tell him, that an aggrieved employee cannot sue a public entity using California’s Private Attorneys General Act.

Under that act, the employee sues on behalf of the state of California, and 75% of any winnings go to the state. For a private individual to sue a public entity would be as if the state were suing itself, Tillett said his peers would tell him.

“That makes sense at first blush,” he said.

But they were wrong.

He had noticed that PAGA specifically names one government agency, the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, as not subject to penalties under the act. “If PAGA is not applicable to public entities, there would be no reason for the Legislature to have excluded a specific public entity,” he said. “It seems easy to me.”

Tillett is an appellate attorney who, like his firm, specializes in representing plaintiffs in employment and civil rights matters. In this case, the employee was the environmental safety officer for California State University, Sonoma, who was constructively terminated after reporting asbestos and lead paint issues to authorities. A jury awarded him and other Sonoma employees more than $2.9 million in PAGA penalties. The university appealed.

In March, the First District Court of Appeal published a decision declaring that public entities can indeed be sued under one prong of PAGA. Sargent v. Board of Trustees of California State University, 2021 DJDAR 2150 (Cal. App. 1st Dist., filed March 5, 2021).

“It’s hugely important,” Tillett said. “It’s a matter of first impression.”

In an unpublished portion of the decision, the court also upheld the trial court’s award of $7.8 million in attorneys’ fees and its use of a 2.0 multiplier.

Tillett had another noteworthy victory in October when the state appellate court upheld a jury’s $1.75 million award to a disabled man who said his employer denied him the accommodation he needed. The unusual aspect was the accommodation he wanted was a different supervisor.

“We had to hold onto a win where the only published authority arguably on point was contrary to our position,” he said about the victory. Do v. Raytheon Co., B293950 (Cal. App. 2nd Dist., filed Oct. 27, 2020).

The unpublished opinion also upheld $2 million in fees for his firm, although Tillett said that issue, including the size of any multiplier, is still being litigated.

“The appellate process can take a long, long time,” he said. “When you’re talking about the original appeal and the fee motion and then the appeal of the fee motion, it can take what seems like forever.”

— Don DeBenedictis