A new published decision gives trial courts broad latitude in two recurring PAGA fights: how to cut a sky-high maximum penalty down to a fair number, and how much to second-guess a judge who shrinks an attorney fee award. On both questions, the Court of Appeal sided with the trial court’s discretion.
Abraham Taduran sued his former employer, dental-products maker Glidewell, under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), Labor Code sections 2698 et seq. By the time of trial, liability had effectively been resolved—three issues by summary adjudication and a fourth by stipulation—leaving only the size of the civil penalties to be decided on briefs and stipulated facts.
Four violations remained. On the wage statement issue, Glidewell’s weekly statements omitted piece-rate pay information, though that information appeared on a separate “Production Sheet,” and no employee actually lost wages. On the rest period issue, Glidewell’s method of rounding fractional rest minutes into hours underpaid some piece-rate workers an average of $0.26 per pay period (about $63,464 total over five years). On the uptime issue, overtime pay was calculated without including non-productive “uptime” pay, costing employees roughly $7,310. On the bonus pay issue, non-discretionary bonuses were left out of the regular-rate calculation, costing about $13,433.
Taduran calculated the maximum statutory penalties at roughly $55.9 million and asked the court not to slash them drastically. Glidewell argued the violations were “hyper-technical” and proposed reductions of more than 99 percent.
The trial court reduced the maximum penalties dramatically, awarding a total of $516,965, allocated as: $100,165 (wage statement), $190,900 (rest period, calculated as 1,909 employees × $100), $167,400 (uptime, $150 × affected employees), and the full $58,500 (bonus pay – no reduction). The court reduced the first three penalties on a per-employee basis, reasoning that the larger violations caused little or no actual wage loss, that Glidewell had acted in good faith and corrected its systems before adjudication, and that the maximum penalties would be “unjust, arbitrary[, and] oppressive.”
Taduran sought about $1,571,658.75 in fees – a $1,047,772.50 lodestar enhanced by a 1.5 multiplier – plus $98,138.21 in costs. The court accepted the lodestar but applied a negative (0.70) multiplier, awarding $733,440 in fees plus the full costs. It found only contingency risk favored an increase (and only slightly), treated attorney skill as neutral, and identified several factors favoring a decrease: the records-based simplicity of the claims, the very limited success (the penalty award was under 1 percent of what was sought), and the fact that the lodestar already reflected current – rather than historical – billing rates for work done years earlier.
The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in full in the published case of Taduran v. James R. Glidewell, Dental Ceramics, Inc., No. G064718 (June 2026), rejecting both of Taduran’s arguments: that the penalty reduction had to be done per pay period, and that the negative fee multiplier could not survive “heightened scrutiny.”
Reviewing the scope of the trial court’s authority de novo and its exercise for abuse of discretion (see Amaral v. Cintas Corp. No. 2 (2008) 163 Cal.App.4th 1157; Thurman v. Bayshore Transit Management, Inc. (2012) 203 Cal.App.4th 1112), the court held that section 2699, subdivision (e)(2) lets a court award a “lesser amount” but supplies no formula for how to get there. While the maximum penalty is calculated per pay period under subdivision (f), nothing requires a reduction to follow that same path. A trial court may therefore reduce a penalty “on a percentage, per pay period or per employee basis.”
The court rejected Taduran’s deterrence argument, noting an employer cannot predict which reduction method (if any) a court will use – and here the court imposed the full penalty on the bonus pay claim, preserving deterrence. It distinguished Moniz v. Adecco USA, Inc. (2021) 72 Cal.App.5th 56, where a settlement unfairly split recovery between two employee classes; here, a single common fund compensated all aggrieved employees proportionately. The court also stressed that the same drastic result could have followed from a per-pay-period reduction, since the math can produce identical numbers.
The negative fee multiplier was within the court’s discretion. Applying the lodestar-multiplier framework of Laffitte v. Robert Half Internat. Inc. (2016) 1 Cal.5th 480 and the deferential review described in Karton v. Ari Design & Construction, Inc. (2021) 61 Cal.App.5th 734, the court sidestepped the unsettled debate over whether “heightened scrutiny” applies to across-the-board fee cuts – a split running between Warren v. Kia Motors America, Inc. (2018) 30 Cal.App.5th 24 and Kerkeles v. City of San Jose (2015) 243 Cal.App.4th 102 (applying heightened scrutiny) and Morris v. Hyundai Motor America (2019) 41 Cal.App.5th 24 (rejecting it), an issue now before the California Supreme Court in Cash v. County of Los Angeles (2025) 111 Cal.App.5th 741, review granted Aug. 20, 2025, No. S291827. Because the trial judge gave specific reasons, the panel found those reasons survived even the stricter standard.
The court approved each rationale. Under PLCM Group, Inc. v. Drexler (2000) 22 Cal.4th 1084, a judge may consider lower historical rates – not to double-count, but to ensure the lodestar reflects fair market value for older work. And in representative actions like PAGA, the degree of monetary success may properly support a negative multiplier (Lealao v. Beneficial California, Inc. (2000) 82 Cal.App.4th 19), a principle that does not apply to non-representative cases such as Graciano v. Robinson Ford Sales, Inc. (2006) 144 Cal.App.4th 140. Finding the trial court had weighed the proper factors, the panel held there was no abuse of discretion.