Silken Brown; Mario de la Rosa, individually and on behalf of other members of the general public similarly situated and as aggrieved employers pursuant to the Private Attorneys General Act ("PAGA"), Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
Cinemark USA, Inc.; Century Theatres, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.
D.C.
No. 3:13-cv-05669-WHO
Liana
Carter (argued), Katherine Kehr, Robert Drexler, and Glenn
Danas, Capstone Law APC, Los Angeles, California, for
Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Emily
B. Vicente (argued) and M. Brett Burns, Hunton & Williams
LLP, Los Angeles, California, for Defendants-Appellants.
Before: Sidney R. Thomas, Chief Judge, and Stephen Reinhardt
and Kathleen M. O'Malley, [*] Circuit Judges.
SUMMARY
[**]
Appellate
Jurisdiction
The
panel denied a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction a
class action complaint alleging wage and hour claims, and
held that the court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §
1291 to consider the appeal on the merits.
Defendants
Cinemark USA, Inc. and Century Theaters, Inc. sought to
dismiss for lack of appellate jurisdiction in light of the
Supreme Court decision in Microsoft Corp. v. Baker,
137 S.Ct. 1702 (2017), because plaintiffs voluntarily settled
some of their claims.
The
panel held that this case was unlike Baker, where
the plaintiffs intended to sidestep Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(f) when
they voluntarily dismissed their claims. The panel held that
the parties' mutual settlement for consideration in this
case did not raise the same concerns. Unlike the plaintiffs
in Baker, the plaintiffs in this case continued
litigating their remaining individual claims after the
district court denied class certification. The panel further
held that the resolution of this case was not a unilateral
dismissal of claims, but a mutual settlement for
consideration reached by both parties which expressly
preserved certain claims for appeal.
ORDER
Defendants
have moved to dismiss this case for lack of appellate
jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, in light of the
Supreme Court decision in Microsoft Corp. v. Baker,
582 U.S. ___, 137 S.Ct. 1702 (2017), because Plaintiffs
voluntarily settled some of their claims. We deny the motion.
I
We
begin with a short procedural history. Silken Brown filed a
Class Action Complaint against Defendants Cinemark USA, Inc.
and Century Theatres, Inc. alleging several wage and hour
claims. Defendants removed the case, and it was consolidated
with similar pending actions by the district court, including
one filed by Mario De La Rosa.
The
district court dismissed Brown's direct wage statement
claim and denied class certification of Plaintiffs' meal
and rest break claims, reporting pay claims, off-the-clock
work claims, derivative wage statement claims, and direct
wage statement claims. Plaintiffs' remaining individual
claims were set for trial. Defendants filed a summary
judgment motion on the remaining claims. The district court
issued a tentative ruling, which proposed granting the motion
in part and denying it in part.
Subsequently,
the parties stipulated to the tentative order and settled all
remaining individual claims. Brown and De La Rosa reserved
the right to challenge the district court's judgment
denying class certification of the direct wage claim and
dismissing Brown's individual direct wage ...