Commentators have quipped that class certification is so easy in California that with little effort a group of plaintiffs could certify even a ham sandwich.  In fact, as we have discussed here, we have seen a proliferation of recent appellate decisions hinging class certification on the mere existence of an employer’s uniform policy – no matter how facially lawful that policy may be or how diverse its application is to the putative class at issue.

In Stiller v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 3:09-cv-2473-GPC-BGS, Plaintiffs Eric Stiller and Joseph Moro alleged that Costco’s loss-prevention closing procedures effectively “forced” employees to work off-the clock without getting paid because they were required to remain on-site after they had clocked out of their shifts to go through security screenings.  In December 2010, the district court certified a California-wide class finding that common questions predominated because Costco employed a centralized policy which applied to all employees.  However, on April 15, the Court decertified the class finding that the purportedly “common” question of whether Costco had a “de facto policy of detaining employees in warehouses during closing procedures without pay” would only determine whether “employees were sometimes detained without pay as a result of the alleged policy.”  Costco’s liability would still hinge on individualized determinations as to “whether, how often, and for how long [individual] class members actually experienced unpaid [off-the-clock] time.”