PAGA: A Call To Arms

Whatever good intentions its proponents may claim, the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) created perverse incentives for plaintiff's lawyers to file representative actions seeking civil penalties for violations of the California Labor Code on behalf of all "aggrieved employees" of the named plaintiff's employer. The named plaintiff often does not know she is being used for purposes of bringing a PAGA action. The alleged violations are often hyper-technical or trivial, if a violation at all – "gotcha" claims, as plaintiff's lawyers like to call them. The "aggrieved employees" – who can number in the tens of thousands if the target is a large employer – most often have suffered no injury. The employer, facing potentially business-destroying liability, too often settles for an amount of money bearing no relationship to the violations allegedly committed. And the plaintiff's lawyers pocket 30-35 percent of the settlement for themselves.