Reyes v. Dollar Tree Stores, Inc.

• Decision Date: 01 April 2015
• Docket Number: No. 15–55176.,15–55176.
• Citation: 781 F.3d 1185
• Parties: Richard REYES, as an individual and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. DOLLAR TREE STORES, INC., a corporation, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

781 F.3d 1185

Richard REYES, as an individual and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff–Appellee
v.
DOLLAR TREE STORES, INC., a corporation, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 15–55176.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted March 5, 2015.
Filed April 1, 2015.

781 F.3d 1186

Dominic J. Messiha (argued), Littler Mendelson, Los Angeles, CA; Lindbergh Porter, Tarun Mehta, Jeffrey Mann, Littler Mendelson, San Francisco, CA, for Defendants–Appellants.

Kenneth H. Yoon (argued), Stephanie E. Yasuda, Law Offices of Kenneth Y. Yoon, Los Angeles, CA; Peter M. Hart, Travis Hodgkins, Law Offices of Peter M. Hart, Los Angeles, CA, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California, Manuel L. Real, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. 2:14–cv–04581–R–VBK.

Before: STEPHEN REINHARDT, N. RANDY SMITH, and ANDREW D. HURWITZ, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

HURWITZ, Circuit Judge:

Defendant Dollar Tree Stores, Inc. removed this case to federal court in 2012, invoking jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332(d), 1453, 1711 –1715. Plaintiff Richard Reyes moved to remand, representing that the amended complaint defined the proposed class narrowly and that the CAFA $5,000,000 amount-in-controversy requirement was therefore unsatisfied. The district court agreed and remanded.

In May 2014, a California superior court certified a broader class than the one described by Reyes during the first removal. It is uncontested that the amount in controversy for the class actually certified exceeds $5,000,000. Dollar Tree again removed after the superior court entered the class certification order, but the district court found removal untimely because the order was based on the same complaint that was the subject of the first removal.

The issue before us is whether the class certification order created a new occasion for removal. We conclude that it did and remand to the district court to exercise jurisdiction under CAFA.

I.

Reyes filed this action in California state court in July 2012, alleging that Dollar Tree violated California Labor Code § 226.7 by denying proper rest breaks to its employees. Reyes filed an amended complaint in December 2012, asserting a second cause of action for unlawful business conduct in violation of California Business and Professions Code § 17200.

781 F.3d 1187

Paragraph fourteen of the amended complaint sought certification of a class of

all current and former non-exempt employees of [Dollar Tree] who worked as assistant managers in California who worked one or more work periods in excess of three and one-half (3.5) hours without receiving a paid ten (10) minute break during which they were relieved of all duties, from and after July 13, 2008.

The amended complaint alleged that the “amount in controversy is less than $5,000,000.00 in the aggregate for the putative Class.”

In December 2012, Dollar Tree removed the action to the United States District Court for the Central District of California, asserting CAFA jurisdiction. In support of the removal, Dollar Tree noted that the amended complaint alleged that plaintiffs “regularly” missed their breaks, and “conservatively interpret [ed] ‘regularly’ to mean a rest period was not ‘authorized or permitted’ in 65% of shifts that were sufficiently long to trigger an obligation to authorize or permit rest periods.” This assumption placed the amount in controversy at $5,525,950.

Reyes moved to remand, arguing that the assumed 65% violation rate was inaccurate. Reyes argued that Dollar Tree had misread the amended complaint: “Defendant goes beyond Plaintiff's allegations to establish the amount in controversy by including claims that Plaintiff has not included in his [amended complaint]—namely, Plaintiff has limited his allegations to shifts where ‘Class Members at times worked without another manager at the same time.’ ” In support of this position, Reyes cited paragraph twenty-eight of the amended complaint, which alleges:

As a pattern and practice, Defendants regularly required employees to work through their rest breaks without proper compensation in that Class Members at times worked without another manager at the same time, and per Defendant policy and practice, were not authorized and permitted to take fully compliant 10–minute rest breaks.

Reyes claimed that only one-third of shifts were worked alone, and that the amount in controversy was therefore only $2,866,772. The district court agreed, finding that the amended complaint limited the putative class to employees who worked alone, and that the amount in controversy therefore did not reach the $5,000,000 CAFA threshold.

After remand, Reyes moved, consistent with his position in the district court, for certification of a class of

all current and former non-exempt employees of Defendants who worked as Assistant Store Managers in California who worked without another Assistant Store Manager on the clock according to Defendant's time records and without another Store Manager scheduled to work according to Defendant's schedule records, and who worked one or more work periods in excess of three and one-half (3.5) hours.

Before oral argument on the motion, however, the superior court issued a tentative ruling concluding that a class of assistant managers who worked alone would not be ascertainable. Noting that California law permitted the court to depart from the plaintiff's proposed definition and redefine the class, the tentative ruling instead proposed certifying a class consisting of all...