Labor & Employment Law Blog

In light of the unprecedented wildfires in the Los Angeles area which commenced on January 7, 2025, the DLSE published a Frequently Asked Questions website to provide guidance to California employers on laws enforced by the Labor Commissioner’s office.

I. Summary

On December 30, 2024, and just before the New Year struck, the California Court of Appeal issued a favorable employer decision on the enforceability of arbitration agreements in Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) cases. In Leeper v. Shipt, Inc., (2024 WL 5251619), the Second District Court of Appeal, Division One, in Los Angeles, held that because every PAGA action necessarily includes an “individual PAGA claim,” PAGA plaintiffs cannot attempt to avoid arbitration by characterizing their lawsuit as a purely representative PAGA claim made on behalf of only other allegedly aggrieved employees, but not the named representative themself. In other words, the court would not allow a “headless” PAGA action to proceed. Accordingly, the court directed the trial court to order the plaintiff, Christina Leeper’s individual PAGA claim to arbitration and stay the representative action in accordance with California Code of Civil Procedure section 1281.4.  This guidance should help end recent attempts by many plaintiffs attempting to circumvent arbitration by “disclaiming” their own individual claims in order to represent only others.

Employees widely use AI often without the knowledge of management. This secret use of AI has been referred to as “shadow IT” in an article by Business Insider. AI is typically used for either content creation or content editing. Content creation includes such tasks as ideation, research assistance, and summarization. Content editing comprises spell check, grammar check, and use of a thesaurus for synonyms. As the use of AI becomes more pervasive in the workplace, one of the big downsides of using AI is its reliability. “Hallucinations” occur frequently when using AI, which causes employers to question the trustworthiness of the work product. It is becoming more challenging to distinguish between human and machine writers as AI writing tools advance.