From the Editor
Jeffrey Isaac Ehrlich Editor-in-Chief
Appellate Reports and Cases in Brief Recent cases of interest to members of the plaintiffs’ bar
About Moody v. Bedford this Issue
Jeffrey Isaac Ehrlich Editor-in-Chief
(2012) __ Cal.App.4th __ (Second Dist. Div. 5)
Who needs to know about this case:
Lawyers handling wrongful-death cases Why it’s important: Holds that an
insurer’s payment of a pre-suit settlement demand does not trigger the “one- action” rule that requires all heirs to join in a single wrongful-death lawsuit. Holds that an insurer facing a pre-suit demand must require plaintiffs to file a wrongful- death suit in order to obtain the protec- tion of the one-action rule. Synopsis: Plaintiffs are the five minor
Jeffrey Isaac Ehrlich About
this Issue Book Review
children of decedent, Corinthia Hood, who was killed in an auto accident in a car driven by Bedford. Hood’s adult daughter and half-sister of the minor plaintiffs, Corisha Brown, tendered a policy-limits demand to Bedford’s insurance carrier before any suit was filed. The insurer repeatedly requested that Brown provide the names of all of Hood’s surviving heirs. Brown maintained that she was the sole surviving heir and provided the
Jeffrey Isaac Ehrlich Editor-in-Chief
insurer with a certificate under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.22 confirm- ing that she was Hood’s successor in interest and no one had a superior right to hers. In reliance on these representa- tions, the insurer paid Brown the policy proceeds and Brown executed a release on the insurer’s behalf of all claims relating to Hood’s death. After the settlement, the plaintiffs,
acting through a guardian ad litem, filed their own wrongful-death lawsuit. The trial court granted defendants summary judgment, holding that the one-action rule barred the plaintiff ’s wrongful-death action. Reversed. The Court held that because Brown had only made a pre-suit demand, the one-action rule was not trig- gered. It further held that in order for a defendant to protect itself in a similar sit- uation, it must require the party making the demand to actually file a wrongful- death action, which can then be settled. Defendants who follow this procedure will be protected by the one-action rule; and those who choose not to follow it will not be protected.
Short(er) takes Labor law; overtime; administrative
exemption; administrative/production dichotomy: Harris v. Superior Court (Liberty Mutual) (2012) __ Cal.4th __ (California Supreme) Claims adjusters for two insurance
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84 — The Advocate Magazine FEBRUARY 2012
companies brought class actions against their employer to recover unpaid over- time. They claimed in their suits that they had been erroneously classified as “administrative” employees, who were exempt from overtime-pay requirements. The trial court originally certified a class, but later granted a motion to partially de- certify the class and denied plaintiff ’s motion for summary adjudication on the defendants’ affirmative defense. The Court of Appeal reversed, finding in favor of plaintiffs. The Supreme Court granted review, and reversed the Court of Appeal. The Court held that the Court of Appeal has put too much reliance on the so- called “administrative/production worker dichotomy,” in which courts determined whether workers were employed in the “production” of the employer’s principal product, and therefore not engaged in administrative work. The Court held that the dichotomy had been effectively super- seded by later statutory and regulatory enactments. The Court held that the prior Bell v. Farmers decisions, on which the appellate court relied, were distin- guishable for two reasons: (1) they had been limited to their facts – where the employer had admitted that the employ- ees at issue were engaged in “routine and unimportant” work; and they were based on a pre-2001 version of the wage order at issue that defined “administrative” work. The Court cautioned that relying on the particular role of employees in one enterprise to deduce a rule applicable to another type of business is difficult, and likely to produce the wrong outcome.
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