Kim Reigns

Piplack v. In-N-Out Burgers, No. G061098 (D4d3 Mar. 7, 2023)

Galarsa v. Dolgen California, LLC, No. F082404A (D5 Feb. 24, 2023)

So, like I was saying in my post on Viking River, in nuking the Iskanian rule that an individual PAGA claim can’t be sent to arbitration, the U.S. Supreme Court kind of assumed that the remaining representative claims would get dismissed for a lack of standing. But California doesn’t have Article III-type standing, and the idea that the plaintiff would lose statutory standing when her claim was hived off was essentially foreclosed by the California Supreme Court’s decision in Kim v. Reins Int’l California, Inc., 9 Cal. 5th 73, 84 (2020).

The standing issue is pending before the California Supreme Court in Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., which hasn’t been argued yet. But in the last couple of weeks, both the 4/3 and the 5 have come to the same conclusion I did—the big Supremes got California law wrong in Viking River because they misread Kim. And since the California Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of California law, Kim reigns.

Update (3/27): The Second District just reached the same conclusion. 

(4/7) And again, this time the 4/1.