Judge Approves Settlement in Safeway State Labor Laws Suit

A class action lawsuit claiming Safeway violated California state labor laws by refusing to provide seats to more than 30,000 cashiers has ended in a settlement, approved in October, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Thomas E. Kuhnle approved the settlement deal. The judge had taken issue with the unusually high attorneys fees and plaintiffs’ award, but ultimately determined the amount to be fair because the case was litigated for nearly eight years and the settlement was a large one.

Per the terms of the settlement, Safeway will pay $12 million broken down as follows: $185,443 for litigation costs; $4.2 million (about 35 percent of the total settlement) in attorney fees; $14,000 to the lead plaintiff; $5.6 million to the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency; and the remaining $1.9 million to affected workers on a proportional basis. Additionally, Safeway has agreed to provide seating to cashiers for a two-year period.

The lead plaintiff had asked for an award of $20,000, noting that she had not expected the case to drag on for eight years. She said she spent nearly 100 hours on the case, meeting with lawyers, attending depositions and responding to discovery requests. The judge was not swayed and reduced the amount on the grounds that it was unusually high.

Safeway does not admit wrongdoing, but agreed to settle in order to avoid the risks and expenses of continuing to litigate. Reportedly, the $12 million settlement represents about 5 percent of the penalties that Safeway could face if a court had ruled in the cashiers’ favor.

The grocery chain could have faced nearly $245 million in penalties, according to the motion requesting approval for the settlement deal. The figure was reached by calculating a penalty of $100 per weekly pay period, over a two-year period, in which Safeway did not provide seats to cashiers.

The Safeway cashiers seating class action lawsuit was filed by the plaintiff in 2011. She claimed that Safeway violated California’s state labor laws by its policy requiring cashiers to stand at all times and failing to provide them with seating. In addition to injury claims, Sharp brought a claim under the Private Attorney Generals Act, which allows individuals to file lawsuits on behalf of the state. 

During the course of litigation, Safeway was unsuccessful in its bid to have the case dismissed. The judge did, however, deny the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, saying that “there was no class to certify since there is only a single PAGA claim at issue, and therefore certifying the class was inappropriate,” Law 360 reported.

California has some of the nation’s strictest state labor laws, which aim to protect California workers with regulations addressing overtime pay, rest and meal breaks as well as working conditions. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) notes that California wage and hour laws are particularly complex when compared to most other states.  

The Safeway Cashier Seating Class Action Lawsuit is Case No. 2011-1-CV-202901, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Santa Clara.

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