Dipanwita Deb Amar

Dipanwita Deb Amar

SAN FRANCISCO - Dipanwita Deb Amar has spent much of the last few years battling collective actions filed by employees under PAGA.

In May, she obtained an important appellate victory in one collection of PAGA cases filed against her client, Beverages & More! Inc. The case began in 2019 when a BevMo employee named Tatiana Paez sued the company in Los Angeles Superior Court for a variety of wage and hour claims. About 14 months later, two more employees, Ashley Shaw and Mario Parra, filed a similar but slightly narrower PAGA suit in the Contra Costa County Superior Court. Two more matching PAGA cases came along still later.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys in the later cases tried to press ahead with their litigation, but Amar won a stay of the Shaw case. After further maneuvering, the Shaw plaintiffs appealed, arguing they should be allowed to litigate separately or join the first case.

Amar countered that courts have inherent authority to stay litigation and that the L.A. court in Paez could claim “exclusive concurrent jurisdiction” over all the cases under the doctrine of that name. About five weeks later, the appellate court published an opinion agreeing with her. Shaw v. Superior Court, 2022 DJDAR 4445 (Cal. App. 1st Dist., May 3, 2022).

PAGA is the problem, Amar said. “The statute deputizes all these private individuals to seek a remedy on behalf of the state, and the state has exerted virtually no control over these claims.” Her client’s situation is an example of how poorly the Legislature thought through how PAGA would apply in courts, she said.

The new U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Viking River Cruises case seems certain to prevent many new PAGA cases, “so that may take care of some of the issues,” she said. And it will likely push more employers to adopt mandatory arbitration provisions in hiring.

These days, Amar spends about 30% of her time not on litigation but on internal investigations for her clients. She believes it is extremely important that a company use experienced litigators for those tasks so that any investigation can prevent future problems.

That is especially true if the company, in the name of transparency, is considering waiving its attorney-client privilege over the investigation. That move could arm “potential future litigants with almost a roadmap to lawsuits,” she said.

-Don DeBenedictis