Suggestions
Amir Mostafavi
Litigation and Trial Attorney at Mostafavi Law Group, APC
Amir Mostafavi, Esq., is an experienced Employment Lawyer specializing in Litigation, Arbitration, and Trial.
He holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Employment Law from Southwestern Law School and a Doctor of Law (J.D.) from the University of West Los Angeles.
Amir Mostafavi represents clients in various employment-related claims such as discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination, and violations of labor codes in California.
His practice includes handling individual cases and class actions from his West Los Angeles office at Mostafavi Law Group, APC.
Highlights
In ADOLPH v. UBER TECHNOLOGIES, the California Supreme Court was asked to decide "whether an aggrieved employee who has been compelled to arbitrate claims under PAGA that are “premised on Labor Code violations actually sustained by” the plaintiff (Viking River, supra, 596 U.S. at p. __ [142 S.Ct. at p. 1916]; see §§ 2698, 2699, subd. (a)) maintains statutory standing to pursue “PAGA claims arising out of events involving other employees” (Viking River, at p. __ [142 S.Ct. at p. 1916]) in court. The California Supreme Court answered in affirmative. "To have PAGA standing, a plaintiff must be an “aggrieved employee” — that is, (1) “someone ‘who was employed by the alleged violator’ ” and (2) “ ‘against whom one or more of the alleged violations was committed.’ ” (Kim v. Reins International California, Inc. (2020) 9 Cal.5th 73, 83, 84 (Kim), quoting § 2699, subd. (c).) Where a plaintiff has brought a PAGA action comprising individual and non-individual claims, an order compelling arbitration of the individual claims does not strip the plaintiff of standing as an aggrieved employee to litigate claims on behalf of other employees under PAGA. "
In our lawsuit, we filed in 2017, we alleged Postmates, now Uber Technologies, Inc. violated various labor codes in a class and representative action under California Lab. Code §2698 et seq. (otherwise known as Private Attorney General Act or PAGA) The trial court denied Postmates’s petition to compel arbitration of the PAGA claim for civil penalties brought by Plaintiffs. In denying Plaintiffs' petition with respect to their PAGA claim, the trial court followed the seminal Supreme Court's decision in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC (2014) 59 Cal.4th 348 (Iskanian), which held that representative action waivers were unenforceable. Shortly after, the United States Supreme Court decided Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (2018) 138 S.Ct. 1612 (Epic Systems). Postmates appealed the trial court’s order arguing that Epic Systems implicitly overruled Iskanian, to the extent that it held that PAGA waivers in arbitration agreements were unenforceable. On July 20, 2021, the First District of the California Court of Appeal in a published opinion, rejected Postmates' arguments that Iskanian was abrogated by subsequent United States Supreme Court decisions and affirmed the order denying the motion to compel arbitration of the PAGA claim. (Winns v. Postmates Inc. (2021) 66 Cal. App. 5th 803.) On October 13, 2021, the California Supreme Court denied Postmates’ petition for review and resolved the issue that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) or Epic Systems did not abrogate Iskanian, and thus, in California, PAGA claims are not subject to arbitration.
