Litigating California Wage & Hour and Labor Code Class Actions

speech. 429 Therefore, the court held the trial court should have dismissed the plaintiffs’
motion for leave to communicate with the class because no such motion was required. 430
Regarding the disclosure of potential class member names and addresses, the Parris court
held that it was “appropriate for the court to consider ‘the possibility of abuses in classaction
litigation’” in determining whether to order disclosure of potential class member
information. 431 Without expressing any opinion on the propriety of ordering disclosure in the
case before it, the court remanded the case to the trial court to make that determination.
Although this decision plainly restricted a trial court’s ability to stop plaintiffs’ counsel from
communicating with class members once plaintiffs’ counsel located them, it did not address
whether plaintiffs may typically obtain discovery of the putative class members’ names and
personal contact information.
The California Supreme Court directly addressed this issue, albeit within the consumer
class action context, in Pioneer Electronics (USA), Inc. v. Superior Court. 432 The plaintiff in
Pioneer filed a discovery motion seeking to compel the defendant to disclose the names
and addresses of customers who complained about a defective DVD player. Ruling for the
plaintiff, the Court instructed Pioneer to send a notice of the suit to all potential class
members allowing them to object to the release of their names and contact information to
the plaintiff. The Court ordered the defendant to release the names of those who did not
respond to the notice and affirmatively object to disclosure.
The first published appellate decision to apply Pioneer to the wage and hour context was
Belaire-West Landscape, Inc. v. Superior Court. 433 In that case, the appellate court went
even further than Pioneer, requiring the defendant to release the addresses and personal
telephone numbers of all current and former employees who did not affirmatively opt out in
response to a pre-certification class notice. Moreover, in contrast to the plaintiff in Pioneer,
who sought information only on those putative class members who had affirmatively
complained about the product at issue, the Belaire-West plaintiff sought personal
information of all current and former employees within the putative class.
Two decisions that followed in the wake of Belaire-West have extended its holding to
broaden the plaintiffs’ rights to contact information. Indeed, the decisions have led many
plaintiffs’ lawyers to contend that they always have the right to the putative class members’
429
430
431
432
433
Id.
Id. at 299-300.
Id. at 300 (citing Gulf Oil Co. v. Bernard, 452 U.S. 89 (1981) and Howard Gunty Profit Sharing Plan v. Superior Court,
88 Cal. App. 4th 572 (2001)).
40 Cal. 4th 360 (2007).
149 Cal. App. 4th 554 (2007).
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