The relation back doctrine and PAGA

The time between submitting a notice of alleged violations to the Labor & Workforce Development Agency (LWDA), as required by section 2699.3(a) of the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (the "PAGA"), and resolution or trial continues to increase. In the interim, life does not stop. Employees who submit the original PAGA notice cease to work for the employer, die, or simply decide they no longer want to continue the litigation. In the interim, new claims can also arise. When these circumstances occur, practitioners may wish to consider if the relation back doctrine applies to the PAGA claims. The court in Hutcheson v. Superior Court, 74 Cal. App. 5th 932 (2022), addressed this very question. As Hutcheson put it: "[t]his case raises a narrow legal issue at the intersection of PAGA and the judicially created doctrine of relation back, a doctrine which, in certain circumstances, deems the claims in an amended complaint to have been filed on the date of the initial complaint for purposes of the statute of limitations." Id. at 935.

In Hutcheson, an aggrieved employee submitted his PAGA notice to the LWDA on Dec. 22, 2017, alleging that the employer did not reimburse financial advisors with all work-related expenses and failed to pay commissions. On Feb. 26, 2018, he filed a complaint alleging a PAGA claim based on the claims contained in the PAGA notice. In March of 2019, the employee sought to amend his complaint to substitute in as the named plaintiff a different employee who had worked for the same employer (the second employee). The second employee had submitted his PAGA notice on April 18, 2018, outlining the same complaints against the employer. The second employee did not file his complaint until February 2019. The question this fact pattern raised was whether the amended PAGA complaint filed by the second employee could relate back to the original PAGA complaint filed by the first employee when the second employee submitted his PAGA notice after the original complaint was filed. Id. at 936-937. If the doctrine applied, then the statute of limitations would extend the claims of the second employee to December of 2016, one year prior to the first employee's PAGA notice, as opposed to April of 2017, one year prior to the second employee's PAGA notice.

For the relation back doctrine to apply, the amended complaint must (1) rest on the same general set of facts, (2) involve the same injury, and (3) involve the same 'instrumentality' or cause of injury. 74 Cal. App. 5th at 940. The relation back doctrine may apply to amended complaints that substitute a new plaintiff and also may apply even if the plaintiff alleges a new legal theory or cause of action, so long as the amended complaint is based on the same general set of facts. Id. Per Hutcheson, when faced with questions regarding the application of the doctrine, the "most important consideration is whether the original pleading gave the defendant adequate notice of the claim." Id.

Reversing the trial court, Hutcheson held that the PAGA does not bar the application of the relation back doctrine. While recognizing that the PAGA does not specifically allow a second aggrieved employee to take over the action of an original aggrieved employee, the Hutcheson court found nothing in the PAGA that would bar such an occurrence. Rather, quoting Kim v. Reins International Calif., Inc., 9 Cal. 5th 73, 87 (2020), Hutcheson iterated that to conclude otherwise "would create a 'hurdle [] that impede[s] the effective prosecution of representative PAGA actions,' thereby 'undermin[ing] the Legislature's objectives.'" 74 Cal. App. 5th at 942. Hutcheson also relied on Brown v. Ralphs Grocery Co., 28 Cal. App. 5th 824, 841-42 (2018), as Brown held that later-noticed PAGA claims could relate back to adequately noticed and alleged claims in an earlier complaint, "even if the later-noticed claims allege violations of different sections of the Labor Code." 74 Cal. App. 5th at 943.

As in Brown, the Hutcheson court remanded the matter to the trial court to determine if the claims in the amended PAGA complaint filed by the second employee "rest on the same general set of facts, involve the same injury, and refer to the same instrumentality as the claims in the original complaint." 74 Cal. App. 5th at 945. If the answers to these questions are yes, then "the relation back doctrine applies." The "mere fact" that the second PAGA notice was submitted after the first PAGA complaint "does not bar the application of the doctrine of relation back to an amended complaint that seeks to substitute" a second employee as the representative plaintiff in an action. Id.

While Hutcheson seems clear, Hargrove v. Legacy Healthcare, Inc., 80 Cal. App. 5th 782 (2022), bears consideration. In Hargrove, the original plaintiff worked for the defendant from August 2014 to August of 2015. She submitted a PAGA notice to the LWDA in August of 2016 and filed her civil action in 2016. In 2020, she died. The Hargrove court affirmed the trial court's denial of the request to substitute a second employee in place of the original plaintiff to prosecute the PAGA claims. Hargrove based its conclusion, at least in part, on the court's belief that the second employee, who worked for the defendant from May of 2019 to August of 2019, and submitted a second PAGA notice to the LWDA in May of 2020, did not meet the PAGA standing requirements until 2019, and could not meet these requirements in 2016, when the original plaintiff submitted the original PAGA notice and filed the original complaint. However, this portion of the holding appears to be at odds with both Hutcheson and also Johnson v. Maxim Healthcare Services, Inc., 66 Cal. App. 5th 924, 930 (2021), where the court held that the fact that the individual plaintiff's "claim may be time-barred does not nullify the alleged Labor Code violations nor strip [the plaintiff] of her standing to pursue PAGA remedies."