Litigating California Wage & Hour and Labor Code Class Actions

contact information and that the court has discretion to skip the Belaire-West process
altogether.
First, in Puerto v. Superior Court, 434 the Second District Court of Appeal held that it was an
abuse of discretion to withhold the personal contact information of putative class members
when the defendant had responded to discovery by listing each putative class member as a
witness with information relevant to the case. The court held that “the right to privacy in
contact information [does not] trump the [plaintiffs’] right to investigate their claims by
contacting witnesses.” 435 Because of the unusual fact that the defendant had listed every
putative class member by name and attested in verified discovery responses that each
person was a percipient witness, Puerto could be distinguished from the typical class
action. 436
In the second decision, Crab Addison, Inc. v. Superior Court, 437 the Second District Court of
Appeal went even further, and held that a procedure by which putative class members had
to affirmatively agree to the disclosure of their contact information was not permissible even
where (1) the employer had not listed the employees as witnesses or otherwise disclosed
their names and (2) the employees had signed a form indicating they did not wish to have
their personal information released—including specifically in connection with “class action
lawsuits.” The court found that employees, in signing the release form, would not realize
that the form might encompass a class action aimed at vindicating their own Labor Code
rights, and that “public policy concerns weigh in favor of enforcing unwaivable statutory
wage and overtime rights through class action litigation over a right to privacy.” 438
Although neither the Puerto nor the Crab Addison decision announced a per se rule that
plaintiffs are entitled to production of all putative class member contact information without
any protections being afforded to the putative class members to protect their privacy rights
in that information, the decisions certainly indicate that a trial judge would not abuse
discretion by simply ordering all the information to be turned over without resort to a
Belaire-West opt-out privacy mailing. We have not yet seen a trend among courts in
bypassing the Belaire-West opt-out process and none of the holdings in the Belaire-West,
434
435
436
437
438
158 Cal. App. 4th 1242 (2008).
Id. at 1248.
Puerto was followed by a federal district court in Stone v. Advance America, 2010 WL 5892501 (S.D. Cal. 2010). In
Stone, the court had previously allowed the plaintiff to obtain class-member contact information through notice and an
opt-out procedure. Thereafter, the plaintiff propounded interrogatories requesting the identities and contact information
for defendant’s former employees during the class period. The court held that no notice or opt-out procedure was
required to obtain this information under Rule 26 of the F.R.C.P., because it sought only basic discovery, i.e., the
names and contact information for percipient witnesses, which the court distinguished from the names and contact
information of class members (even though there was substantial overlap between the two).
169 Cal. App. 4th 958, 973-74 (2008).
Id. at 974.
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