On August 21, 2012, the Second District Court of Appeal in Hernandez v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. II (Hernandez II), Case No. BC373759 (certified for publication August 30, 2012), held that while employers must provide employees with meal and rest breaks, they need not ensure employees take them. (Hernandez v. Chipotle I (2010) 189 Cal.App.4th 751, reached the same conclusion, but was yet another case reconsidered in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Super. Ct. (2012) 53 Cal.4th 1004.)
Plaintiff Hernandez sued employer Chipotle on behalf of a class of employees who claim they had been denied meal and rest breaks. Chipotle directs employees to record their breaks, and pays them for the time they take for breaks even though they are relieved of duty and free to leave the restaurant. Employees claimed managers had denied or interrupted their breaks in varying degrees. Employees and supervisors claimed employees often forgot to record breaks, or recorded them inaccurately.
The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s denial of class certification. Citing Brinker, the Court held that “[i]t is an employer’s obligation to ensure that its employees are free from its control for thirty minutes, not to ensure that the employees do any particular thing during that time.” The Court relied on the Labor Code’s and IWC orders’ use of words such as “provide,” “authorize,” and “permit,” and reasoned that requiring employers to enforce breaks would place an undue burden on large employers and those employers who cannot remain in contact with employees during the day.
Accordingly, individual issues on the reason a given Chipotle employee missed or took shortened breaks predominated over issues common to the class, the time records did not show that plaintiff can prove on a class wide basis that the employer failed to provide employees with breaks, and substantial evidence of conflicts of interest among the putative class members existed. Thus, class certification was improper.
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