Dumb Case, But Not a SLAPP

Supershuttle Int’l, Inc. v. Labor & Workforce Dev. Agency, No. B292054 (D2d8 Oct. 7, 2019)

Supershuttle won a case in Sacto Superior against various state labor agencies, which resulted in a ruling that some of its drivers were independent contractors, not employees. But then the Labor Commissioner served Supershuttle with a bunch of so-called Berman notices in administrative wage claims brought by drivers in LA. 

The whole Berman procedure  doesn’t apply to independent contractors. But the Labor Commissioner indicated she didn’t intend to be bound by the Sacto ruling. So Supershuttle filed an action in LA Superior, seeking dec relief that the agencies were collaterally estopped from re-litigating the IC/employee issue on behalf of the drivers in the Berman hearings.

The Commissioner filed an anti-SLAPP motion, which the trial court denied. The Commissioner appeals. 

This is all a little hard to follow, because Supershuttle’s moves are kind of procedurally screwy. As the Court points out, Supershuttle could have just argued collateral estoppel in the trial de novo it gets in superior court on appeal of an adverse Berman ruling. So it’s not clear why this declaratory relief action is procedurally legit. (The collateral estoppel point also seems a little fraught, given that the drivers who are making the wage claims weren’t parties to the Sacto case. “Due process prohibits estopping [non-parties to prior cases] despite one or more existing adjudications of the identical issue which stand squarely against their position.” Blonder-Tongue Labs., Inc. v. Univ. of Illinois Found., 402 U.S. 313, 329 (1971).)

In any event, just because a case is dumb or procedurally flawed doesn’t make it a SLAPP. Here, the action arises from and challenges the Commissioner’s official quasi-judicial act of declining to apply preclusive effect to the prior judgment. Although official acts of government bodies are sometimes preceded or conveyed in communications, the acts themselves are not exercises of speech or petitioning. They are thus not subject to anti-SLAPP treatment. The Supreme Court was pretty clear on that in both Park and City of Montebello.

Affirmed.