Litigating California Wage & Hour and Labor Code Class Actions

purposes, are mass actions, i.e., actions in which monetary claims by 100 or more plaintiffs
are proposed to be tried jointly because they involve common questions of law or fact. 301
The CAFA is not retroactive and does not apply to class actions filed in state court before
its enactment on February 18, 2005, and removed to federal court after that date. 302
C. Removal Under CAFA
The burden of establishing removal jurisdiction remains on the proponent of federal
jurisdiction. 303 Removal must be timely and must be done during one of two thirty-day
periods for removing the case. The first thirty-day removal period is triggered “if the case
stated by the initial pleading is removable on its face.” 304 The second thirty-day removal
period is triggered if the initial pleading does not indicate that the case is removable, and
the defendant receives “a copy of an amended pleading, motion, order or other paper” from
which removability may first be ascertained. 305
If a complaint alleges damages in excess of $5 million, then the amount in controversy is
”presumptively satisfied” unless it appears to a legal certainty that the claim is actually for
less than the jurisdictional minimum. 306
If the complaint fails to specify any amount in damages, the removal papers must provide
the court with facts to support the jurisdictional amount. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit has
held that the defendant seeking removal must prove by a “preponderance of the evidence”
that the amount in controversy has been met. 307
The third, and possibly the most important, scenario is when the complaint alleges that the
amount in controversy is less than $5 million. The Ninth Circuit addressed this scenario in
Lowdermilk v. United States Bank. 308 When this sort of pleading occurs, the removing
defendant must prove to a “legal certainty” that the CAFA amount in controversy has been
met. The Ninth Circuit first noted that federal courts are courts of “limited jurisdiction” and
therefore should strictly construe subject matter jurisdiction. 309 Second, the court noted that
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Id. § 1332 (d) (11)(B)(i).
See Bush v. Cheaptickets, Inc., 425 F.3d 683 (9th Cir. 2005).
Lowdermilk v. United States Bank National, 479 F.3d 994, 997 (9th Cir. 2007); Lewis v. Verizon Comm’n, Inc., 2010 WL
4645465, 4 (9th Cir. 2010).
Harris v. Bankers Life & Cas. Co., 425 F.3d 689, 694 (9th Cir. 2005).
Carvalho v. Equifax Info. Serv., LLC, 629 F.3d 876, 885 (9th Cir. 2010).
Lowdermilk, 479 F.3d at 998; Abrego Abrego v. Dow Chem. Co., 443 F.3d 676 n.8 (9th Cir. 2006).
Abrego Abrego, 443 F.3d at 683.
Lowdermilk, 479 F.3d at 1000.
Id. at 998.
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