Jernagin v. City of Los Angeles
In this class action on behalf of sanitation truck drivers employed by the City of Los Angeles, the trial court granted class certification and ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor on the certified liability issue. Upon the parties’ stipulation the court then severed one individual plaintiff from the class, heard that plaintiff’s damage claim, and entered judgment for $8,304.08 against the City of Los Angeles for its failure to provide that plaintiff with “off duty†meal breaks on 310 occasions. The claims of the remaining class members were stayed pending the outcome of this appeal.[1]
The City of Los Angeles seeks reversal of the judgment, contending that the trial court erred in imposing liability against it on two grounds: that as a charter city it is exempt from the Labor Code and wage order provisions on which the liability determination rests; and that in any event its rules and regulations do not render the meal breaks of its sanitation truck drivers on-duty meal breaks, rather than off-duty meal breaks, as the trial court ruled they do. We conclude that with respect to its sanitation truck drivers, the City is not exempt from the state-law rules relating to meal breaks; and that the constraints placed on the plaintiff sanitation truck drivers during the meal breaks provided by the City’s rules render them on-duty meal breaks, for which compensation is required. We therefore affirm the judgment in favor of the individual plaintiff and against the City of Los Angeles.
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