"The civil justice system is not well-served by turning Starbucks into a Daddy Warbucks."
That's the closer to the California Fourth District Court of Appeal's 20-page opinion tossing out a suit against the coffee provider for allegedly not making it clear enough to job prospects they didn't have to fess up to a pot possession conviction more than two years old when filling out a job application form. (Download the opinion: Starbucks v. Superior Court (Lords).pdf)
What Starbucks maybe did wrong: Leave too much space on its two-page job form between the sentence asking applicants if they've been convicted of a crime in the past seven years and the bold face CALIFORNIA APPLICANTS ONLY sentence telling them if marijuana possession more than two years ago was their rap they didn't have to answer the seven year question.
What the lawyers suing Starbucks (read about them below) did: Persuaded a trial judge to declare that ...
- "The mere offering of the application containing the impermissible question is a violation of the Labor Code;"
- Every Californian who applied for a job at Starbucks since June 2004 was part of a class of people done wrong by this (regardless if they ever got nailed smoking dope, told Starbucks about it, didn't get hired, or got hired anyway!);
- That every one of these applicants (maybe 135,000) was entitled to state Labor Code damages of $200 each;
- That under the Labor Code it didn't matter whether any applicant had any real damages (that no one incurred damages was made clear by the judge's tossing out a separate Unfair Competition Law cause of action because of Proposition 64's requirement since 2004 that there's no UCL violation without loss of money or property);
- And that it didn't matter that two of the three job applicants who signed on as named plaintiffs testified in court that they read the entire application and knew they didn't have to mention a marijuana conviction (which neither had anyway!)
What Starbucks did: Spilled hot coffee all over itself after calculating that 135,000 applicants getting $200 each totals $27 million! Not counting interest and attorney fees!
What the Court of Appeal did:
- Scolded Starbucks for its nationwide job form not having the seven year conviction question and the California marijuana exception closer together;
- Observed that despite the layout problem, two of the three named plaintiffs' admitted actually understanding both these parts of the application and that ignoring this fact would open the door to suits by "professional job seekers, whose quest is to voluntarily find (and fill out) job applications which they know to be defective solely for the purpose of pursuing litigation ... California does not sanction lawsuits for fraudulent misrepresentations brought by persons who, rather than having been deceived, act for the sole purpose of bringing a lawsuit against 'potential targets for litigation,'"
- Determined that putting every job applicant into the class action didn't make sense when the people protected by the law at issue were only those convicted of pot possession and maybe not hired because they admitted it;
- Stated that Starbucks is entitled to recovery from the plaintiffs "its costs" in surviving the litigation.
Some Observations by the Court of Appeal::
* "There are better ways to filter out impermissible question on job applications than allowing 'lawyer bounty hunter' lawsuits brought on behalf of tens of thousands of unaffected job applicants. Plaintiffs' strained efforts to use the marijuana reform legislation to recover millions of dollars from Starbucks gives a bizarre new dimension to the every day expressions 'coffee joint' and 'coffee pot.'"
* "Enhancing the prospects for obtaining a settlement on a basis other than the merits is hardly a worthy legislative objective."
* "Given the size of the class, the potential exposure is so large that the pressure to settle may become irresistible. ...'This is a valid concern: Many corporate executives are unwilling to bet their company that they are in the right in in big-stakes litigation, and a grant of class status can propel the stakes of a case into the stratosphere ...This interaction of procedure with the merits justifies an earlier appellate look. By the end of the case it will be too late -- if indeed the case has an ending that is subject to appellate review.'"
Attorneys listed in the December 10 opinion as representing the plaintiffs (plus information from the California Bar web site) are:
* H. Scott Leviant - Initiative Legal Group LLP, Los Angeles; USC Law School (admitted 1999)
* Mike Arias - Arias Ozzello & Gignac LLP, Los Angeles; Pepperdine University School of Law (admitted 1984)
* Mikael Stahle - Arias Ozzello & Gignac LLP, Los Angeles; Loyola Law School (admitted 1996)
* Jason E. Barsanti - Meckler, Bulger, Tilson, Chicago; Pepperdine University School of Law (admitted 2005)
Comments and a link to the decision are at the Carlton DiSante & Freudenbeger LLP employment law web site ...
... and at the Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro LLP class action defense site.