CRST Expedited, Inc. v. Superior Court, 2025 WL 1874891 (Cal. Ct. App. 2025)

Espiridion Sanchez filed this PAGA action against his former employer on behalf of himself and other allegedly “aggrieved employees.” The employer filed a motion to compel arbitration of Sanchez’s individual PAGA claims, relying on the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, 596 U.S. 639 (2022), and dismissed the entire action on the ground that PAGA “facially requires, conjunctively, that the aggrieved employee bring the action on behalf of himself and other current or former employees.” Following the California Supreme Court’s rapid response to Viking River in Adolph v. Uber Techs., Inc., 14 Cal. 5^th 1104 (2023), the trial court granted Sanchez’s motion to reconsider the order dismissing and reinstated the nonindividual PAGA claims. Next, Sanchez filed a motion to dismiss his individual PAGA claims in order to avoid having to arbitrate them – thus rendering the lawsuit a “headless” PAGA action.

After the trial court denied the employer’s motion for judgment on the pleadings to dismiss the “headless” PAGA action, the employer filed a petition for writ of mandate, which, in this opinion, the Court of Appeal denied. After reasoning that in the context of PAGA, the word “and” is an “inclusive disjunctive” (meaning “and/or”), the Court concluded that the statute “allows PAGA plaintiffs and their counsel the flexibility to choose among bringing a PAGA action that seeks to recover civil penalties on (1) the LWDA’s individual PAGA claims, (2) the LWDA’s nonindividual PAGA claims, or (3) both.” The Court noted that its opinion only applied to the version of PAGA that existed before the most recent legislative amendments to that statute took effect on July 1, 2024. See also Osuna v. Spectrum Sec. Servs., Inc., 111 Cal. App. 5^th 516 (2025) (plaintiff was an aggrieved employee with standing to assert a representative PAGA claim even though his individual PAGA claim was barred by the one-year statute of limitations). In related news, the viability of “headless” PAGA actions presumably will be determined by the California Supreme Court in Leeper v. Shipt, Inc., 107 Cal. App. 5th 1001 (2024), rev. granted,Case No. S289305 (Apr. 16, 2025).