Supreme Court rejects "place of operations" test.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 9-0, which overrules the Ninth Circuit's decision that Hertz Corporation should be deemed a citizen of the State of California because its California operations are larger than those of any other state.  (My commentary on the Ninth Circuit case is here.)  Since I saw some commentary elsewhere wondering whether this is another example of the corporatist federal courts once again making it more difficult for the little guy to sue, I feel the need to point out that this decision has limited impact, and does not seem based on any intent to prevent people from suing corporations.  (Otherwise the case would likely not have been decided by a 9-0 margin.)

All the decision does do is allow corporations like Hertz to remove cases to federal court even in states where the bulk of their operations are found.  Every corporation is deemed a citizen of at most two states, its place of incorporation and its principal place of business.  Now it is clear that principal place of business is the place where the corporation's activities are directed, and not necessarily the place where the bulk of those activities are conducted. That might seem unfair in some cases, but it does seem to accord with the common sense view of what a corporate headquarters is. This case does not change the fact that those are the only two states where corporations cannot remove state law-based cases brought by citizens of those states. Corporations could, both before and after this decision, remove diversity cases in the other 48 or 49 (depending on whether a corporation is headquartered in the same state as it is incorporated) states.  The Hertz decision only impairs the ability of plaintiffs in states where corporations maintain their largest share of operations--which might have been deemed the corporate headquarters under the Ninth Circuit's rejected test--to maintain their actions in state court.

So while Hertz gets to remove cases in California to federal court, and thus escapes the terrible fate of being forced to defend actions by California citizens in California state courts, Hertz will still have to face the citizens of New Jersey in state court, since no diversity of citizenship will be present in cases brought in New Jersey, where Hertz maintains what the federal courts now must uniformly define as its principal place of business. Since I spend a lot of time practicing in the California state courts, and have a lot of respect for California state judges, I can't say that Hertz will really be better off trading the Golden State's courts for the state courts of the Garden State. Or is it possible that Hertz took this case all the way up to the Supreme Court merely to establish its pride in its New Jersey headquarters?

(photo of Hertz headquarters in Park Ridge, New Jersey, from American Companies.com)

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Pages

It has taken me years, but I finally have this website functioning more or less the way I have been envisioning it for some time.  That is because Blogger finally allows you to set up pages that allow bloggers to post static messages such as "About Me," "Contact," etc.  These are perfect for setting up pages for biographical information, and information about various practice areas.  Of course I could have changed a while ago to a more sophisticated blogging platform, but Blogger has the advantage of being pretty easy to use.  There were also some work-arounds I could have tried, but never did.  I waited until Blogger set it up for me.  So even though I don't know much about the programming necessary to set up a website--my 14 year old kid probably knows more HTML code than I do--I have been able through trial and error and experience to figure out how to create a pretty decent-looking site, if I do say so myself.  So thank you Google and Blogger.

Comments, and especially compliments, are welcome.  The site could probably still use a little tweaking here and there.

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Office for Rent

We have a large window office available in our four lawyer suite.  It is a prime location right across the street from the downtown LA public library.  On the 17th floor of a prestigious, Class A office building.  Large shared conference room, kitchen and storage available.  Use of copier, postage meter, internet, phone service (VOIP service available), and secretarial services at cost.  Furnished (as shown in picture below) or empty. You would be sharing space with three talented and very amiable attorneys.  Rent is negotiable.  Please forward this post to anyone you know who may be interested (just click on the little envelope below the picture).

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Shortened Time Period to File Wage and Hour Claims Unenforceable

In Pellegrino v. Robert Half International, Inc., the Fourth District Court of Appeal in California affirmed summary judgment in the employees' favor, holding that a provision in the parties' employment agreements requiring that any claims be brought within six months of termination of employment, was unenforceable as to plaintiffs' statutory claims. Building on prior cases holding that Labor Code provisions governing wages and hours are unwaivable, the Court of Appeal determined that it would contravene public policy to deny these employees a remedy for unpaid wages. It could be argued that Section 17200 itself sets an arbitrary cut-off date for wage and hour claims that has nothing to do with any public policies in the Labor Code, but since the limitations period under the unfair business practices statute is longer than the periods in the Labor Code, presumably that could not violate any public policies regarding the payment of required wages.

The Court also affirmed a finding after trial that the plaintiffs in this case, who were account executives at a temporary employment agency, had been improperly mis-classified as exempt.

Finally, in another interesting discussion, the Court of Appeal found that defendant had not been denied the right to jury trial by the court's decision to try the equitable issues under Business and Professions Code Section 17200, which included the classification issues, to the court. (The parties' stipulation regarding the amount of damages applicable to each employee's claim made trial of any legal issues unnecessary.)

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