Thursday, January 28, 2021
In
Garcia v. Haralambos Beverage Co., the California Court of Appeal embraced the adage “time kills all deals” to conclude that an employer waived its right to arbitrate the wage-hour claims at issue in the case by, among other things, delaying two years to seek arbitration as a last resort and waiting to locate the plaintiffs’ signed arbitration agreements. By waiving its right to arbitrate, the employer also lost its ability to strike class claims as a result.
Background
In
Garcia, two plaintiffs initiated a potential wage-hour class action against their employer in November 2016. The employer had an arbitration policy in its handbook. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, the employer located checklists pertaining to new-hire documents that confirmed each named plaintiff had received the arbitration policy.
A California State Bar committee on Friday voted to extend the temporary lawyer licensing program to any test-taker since July 2015 whose scores passed a newly reduced threshold, providing a path for more law graduates to be admitted by the bar without having to retake the exam.