LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – It’s not too late to sue your employer from four years ago, a California appeals court has ruled.
Despite waiting two years past the normal statute of limitations, Von Hildebrandt’s lawsuit against Staples will move forward, the Second Appellate District ruled Dec. 4.
Hildebrandt’s lawsuit claims Staples misclassified its general managers as employees exempt from overtime pay despite requiring them to spend more than half of their time performing duties delegated to non-exempt employees.
Hildebrandt was a general manager from 2000-13. In the years after his employment ended, two class actions were filed by general managers. One was voluntarily dismissed, and in the other, Hildebrandt submitted a declaration in support of class certification.
But certification was denied in 2017 because of “great variation in how Staples store general managers perform their jobs,” the trial court wrote.
Two months later, in June 2017, Hildebrandt filed his case. The applicable statutes of limitations rules were tolled during the pendency of the other cases, he argued, in order to protect the efficiency of the class action on behalf of other prospective class members.
A Los Angeles trial court agreed but the appeals court says there is no harm to Staples in suspending the statute of limitations. Hildebrandt was reasonably relying on the second lawsuit to pursue his claims.
“(T)here is no reasonable dispute that Staples was readily able to determine the number and generic identity of all potential plaintiffs who might have participated in the Wesson or Hatgis class action judgment, and Staples could do this without an individualized assessment of intervening factors related to causation, damages, or even its affirmative defense,” Justice Anne Egerton wrote.