Over a year ago, the Ninth Circuit deferred setting the damages in a wage-and-hour class action, saying it couldn’t determine the appropriate amount without deciding “the very issue that the California Supreme Court is positioned to resolve in Ferra,” i.e., Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel, LLC. The appeals court concluded that “the better course of action is not to decide this important question of state law ourselves, but to leave that question in the hands of the California Supreme Court.”
The Ninth Circuit’s memorandum disposition in Ibarra v. Wells Fargo Bank said the employee class plaintiffs should receive either $24,472,114.36 or $97,284,817.91, depending on the outcome in Ferra.
Well, the Supreme Court decided Ferra yesterday and it broke in the employee direction. The court concluded that the statutorily required extra pay for missed mandatory meal or rest breaks is not just an employee’s hourly wage but also includes other nondiscretionary amounts, such as, in Ferra, quarterly nondiscretionary incentive payments.
We don’t know what the monetary value of yesterday’s opinion is in the Ferra case itself. In the Ibarra case, however, it appears to be worth over $72,000,000.
