Bains v. Dep't of Indus. Relations

• Citation: 198 Cal.Rptr.3d 772,244 Cal.App.4th 1120
• Decision Date: 16 February 2016
• Docket Number: C076700
• Court: California Court of Appeals
• Parties: Jaswant BAINS et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Defendant and Respondent.

244 Cal.App.4th 1120

198 Cal.Rptr.3d 772

Jaswant BAINS et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants,

v.DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Defendant and Respondent.

C076700

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

Filed February 16, 2016

Boutin Jones Inc., Robert D. Swanson, Michael E. Chase, Katherine L.M. Mola, and for Plaintiffs and Appellants.

David Cross for Defendant and Respondent.

Duarte, J.Prunes are harvested from trees and must be dried to be marketed. Two administrative rules set forth different overtime pay rates for agricultural workers who harvest fruit and for those who process fruit for market; generally speaking, the latter receive more generous overtime pay. This case plumbs the line dividing the workers subject to each respective rule, as applicable to the agricultural practices described herein.

Plaintiffs Jaswant Bains and Piara Gosal, farmers, appeal from an adverse judgment after a court trial in which they sought a declaration that certain of their workers were not subject to the more generous of two wage orders issued by the Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (Department or DLSE, as context indicates).

Plaintiffs first contend the trial court lacked jurisdiction because they themselves failed to exhaust administrative remedies. However, we conclude that by submitting the matter for decision by the trial court, plaintiffs invited any such error.

Plaintiffs next challenge the trial court's conclusion on the merits. As we will explain, we find the trial court correctly interpreted the relevant wage orders. Some workers harvest the prunes from the trees, whence they are transported to fixed structures where other workers process them for marketing by drying them. Neither the fact the fixed structures abut the orchards nor the fact that the fruit must be dried in order to be marketed alters this distinction in function between the workers, a distinction the Department has determined merits a difference in providing overtime wages.

Accordingly, we shall affirm the judgment.

BACKGROUND

The Industrial Welfare Commission has issued a number of wage orders that in part prescribe the overtime rates due to various classes of workers, and the DLSE enforces these orders. (See generally, Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court (2012) 53 Cal.4th 1004, 1026, 139 Cal.Rptr.3d 315, 273 P.3d 513 (Brinker ); Tidewater Marine Western, Inc. v. Bradshaw (1996) 14 Cal.4th 557, 561–562, 59 Cal.Rptr.2d 186, 927 P.2d 296.) The two wage orders at issue in this case, wage orders Nos. 13 and 14, are formal administrative regulations. (See Cal.Code Regs., tit. 8, §§ 11130, 11140.) The parties do not dispute in this case that wage order No. 13 would provide more generous overtime rates than would wage order No. 14. More details about each of these wage orders will be provided, post.

Pretrial Procedure

On April 2, 2013, plaintiffs sued for declaratory relief seeking an adjudication of which of the two wage orders applied to certain workers. To demonstrate the existence of a justiciable controversy, the complaint attached a letter dated November 9, 2012, from the Department to plaintiffs' counsel, contending that wage order No. 13 applied to certain of plaintiffs' workers. Plaintiffs sought a declaration resolving the interpretive dispute so that they would know how to compensate those workers during the upcoming 2014 agricultural season without threat of penalty.

The Department's answer admitted the gist of the dispute, but in part asserted plaintiffs had failed to exhaust administrative remedies. The Department's trial brief also raised the issue of failure to exhaust administrative remedies, and contended the complaint was premature for this reason. Plaintiffs replied that requiring them to risk citation for underpayment of appropriate overtime wages would be onerous and would in any event ultimately lead to a superior court action to resolve what they characterized as a legal, not factual, dispute.

Trial

At the court trial, the parties stipulated that various exhibits would be admitted into evidence, and they are included in the clerk's transcript.

Wage order No. 14 in part covers workers engaged in "[t]he harvesting of any agricultural or horticultural commodity, including but not limited to, picking, ... field packing, and placing in field containers or in the vehicle in which the commodity will be hauled, and transportation on the farm or to a place of first processing or distribution." (Cal.Code Regs., tit. 8, § 11140, subd. 2(D)(4), italics added.) Thus, this wage order, generally speaking, covers employees engaged in a variety of planting, watering, tending, and gathering activities, but not in activities changing the nature of the crops.

Wage order No. 13 covers "all persons employed in industries preparing agricultural products for market, on the farm," with specified exceptions. (Cal.Code Regs., tit. 8, § 11130, subd. 1.) Briefly summarized as relevant here, wage order No. 13 covers workers engaged in "any operation performed in a permanently fixed structure ... on the farm ... for the purpose of preparing agricultural ... products for market ... and includes all operations incidental thereto." (Cal.Code Regs., tit. 8, § 11130, subd. 2(H), italics added.) Thus, this wage order, generally speaking, covers employees engaged in altering the crops in some manner to facilitate their marketing.¹

The only trial witness was a Department employee called by plaintiffs.

Facundo Rosas has been a detective with the Labor Commissioner's Bureau of Field Enforcement since 2006, and inspects farmers in the Sacramento Valley. Bains and Gosal dry their prunes from fruit harvested in their own orchards. Prunes are harvested by shaking trees to dislodge fruit (so-called "French prunes" or fruit still on the tree), which is then collected in bins that are moved to a prune dryer. Prunes are dehydrated in a fixed structure. Rosas disagreed when asked if drying was part of the harvesting process.

Detective Rosas believed that workers in the drying facility were not harvesters and therefore were entitled to the more generous overtime benefits set forth in wage order No. 13. When Rosas spoke to Bains, Bains asserted those workers were to be treated the same as those "working in the orchards" who were subject to wage order No. 14 and who therefore received less generous overtime benefits.

Detective Rosas was shown a 2006 document (exhibit 10 at trial) that was "a guide" prepared by the Department for classifying activities pertaining to the two wage orders. The portion of the guide relevant to wage order No. 13 listed activities including "sorting, grading, moisturizing, drying/fumigating, packaging, [and] shipping." Rosas testified that Exhibit 10 was "only a guide" and further testified that in the past—"[m]aybe back in the 50's"—orchardists may have dried prunes in the field, but "nobody" uses that method now, and he had never seen that done in his lifetime. Rosas agreed that one part of the guide pertaining to prunes said "growing, spraying, thinning, picking and drying applies under" wage order No. 14, but testified that was just "a guideline."² Rosas testified that fumigation can be done in a prune dryer, as can moisturization, and "some places do sort them, and they grade them by the size of the dried prune." Rosas agreed the term "drying" as used in both parts of the guide was used "in the same sense" but added that in the case of the workers at issue here wage order No. 13 "would apply because ... those are the specific functions that occur in a prune dryer."

Bains has a separate company—Sacramento Packing—that processes fruit, and had conceded to Rosas that workers there were subject to wage order 13. However, both he and Gosal have drying facilities next to their own orchards in which their own prunes are dried. If either Bains or Gosal left their prunes in bins, they would rot; prunes must be dehydrated to be marketable.

Statement of Decision and Judgment

After considering posttrial briefing and issuing a tentative decision, the trial court issued a statement of decision as follows: Plaintiffs dry their own prunes in their own fixed structures. Prunes are harvested by shaking the prunes off the tree, collecting them in bins, and moving them to be dried. Prunes have not been dried in the orchards since the 1950's, and must be dried to be marketed. Wage order No. 13 refers to operations performed in fixed structures to prepare products for market. Wage order No. 14 refers to harvesting products and placing them in containers where they will be taken to the place of first processing. Wage order No. 13 applies to workers in the drying facility because it is a fixed structure and the work occurs after harvesting, which ends when the prunes are placed in bins to be taken for first processing.

The judgment in part declares that wage order No. 13 applies to the drying of the farmers' own prunes "after the prunes have been delivered to the drying facility during the upcoming prune harvest season in 2014."³

After the trial court denied their motion for a new trial, plaintiffs timely filed this appeal from the judgment.

DISCUSSION

I

Exhaustion of Remedies

Plaintiffs assert the trial court lacked jurisdiction to issue a judgment because no administrative hearing had been conducted to consider the applicability of the wage orders in question to the work done by their workers, and contend the issue of lack of jurisdiction can be raised at any time in the proceedings. We conclude that any error was invited.

"Where a party by his or her conduct induces the commission of error, the party is estopped from asserting it as a ground for reversal. This application of the estoppel principle is generally known as the doctrine of invited error." (9 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (5th ed. 2008) Appeal, § 389, p. 447.) "The appellant cannot submit a matter for determination by the lower court and contend...