Wage Issue Before California Supreme Court

Decades ago the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a “de minimis rule” for lawsuits seeking compensation under the federal Fair Labor Standards for “negligible” time worked. The California Supreme Court has not yet passed on the applicability of this doctrine to California wage claims, but it has now agreed to do so in Troester v. Starbucks Corp. The plaintiff in that case says that Starbucks required him to engage in various closing-time activities and failed to pay him for his time. “Before Troester, two different three-judge panels of the Ninth Circuit concluded that the California Supreme Court would likely apply the de minimis rule to California claims,” write Felix Shafir in this Today’s General Counsel articles. “As California’s high court now takes up the same issue in Troester, it will be interesting to see if these predictions prove to be correct.”