The legal pot is really boiling these days when it comes to civil penalty claims under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act. Many, if not most, California class action complaints contain PAGA claims, and plaintiffs increasingly are filing so-called “pure PAGA actions” that purport to seek only civil penalties under PAGA and not wages, premiums or statutory penalties that typically are sought in class actions. Some plaintiffs reason that if they can first get a judgment for PAGA penalties, they can then invoke “collateral estoppel” to collect other remedies in a second action. This is quite an evolution from the conventional wisdom that a PAGA cause of action in a class action complaint is simply a fail-safe in the event the court refuses to certify a class.
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