Category: Daily News

The Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (MMBA) (Gov. Code, §§ 3500–3511) governs labor disputes between California public employers and unions, and establishes impasse procedures. Under the MMBA’s default scheme, a factfinding panel’s settlement recommendation is “advisory only,” and the employer may, after a public hearing, implement its last, best, and final offer. As an alternative, the statute allows charter cities and counties to adopt their own impasse procedures – so long as those procedures include binding arbitration (Gov. Code, § 3505.5, subd. (e)).

The City and County of San Francisco, a charter city and county, took that alternative. Under Charter section A8.409-4, eligible labor disputes that reach impasse go to “interest arbitration,” where arbitrators must select between each side’s last offer on each disputed issue, and their decision is “final and binding.”

The real party in interest, the Municipal Attorneys Association of San Francisco (MAA), represents roughly 500 City attorneys. Under Charter section 10.104, those attorneys are “exempt” employees who serve “at the pleasure of the appointing authority”- meaning they are at-will and may be terminated without cause. During recent negotiations – prompted by what the MAA said was a history of “mass political firings” at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office – the union advanced two proposals that would change that status. Proposal 1 required “just cause” and progressive discipline for any discipline, including terminations, with disputes subject to binding arbitration. Proposal 14 required layoffs in inverse order of seniority. Together the court called these the “just cause proposals.”

The City refused to submit the proposals to binding interest arbitration. It agreed to bargain, mediate, and proceed through MMBA factfinding, but maintained throughout that the proposals conflicted with the Charter and were not eligible for the Charter’s binding interest arbitration. The MAA disagreed and filed an unfair practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).

After an expedited hearing, an Administrative Law Judge issued a proposed decision concluding that section 10.104 conflicted with the MMBA, that the MMBA superseded section 10.104 under the home rule doctrine as a narrowly tailored matter of statewide concern, that the just cause proposals were eligible for binding interest arbitration, and that the City’s refusal to arbitrate constituted bad faith bargaining.

PERB, in Municipal Attorneys Association of San Francisco, Teamsters Local 856 v. City and County of San Francisco (2025) PERB Dec. No. 2958-M, affirmed the ALJ’s conclusions but on different reasoning. Rather than finding a conflict, PERB harmonized section 10.104 with the MMBA, reasoning that the section permits the City to establish just cause protections by regulation, policy, MOU, or through the Charter’s interest arbitration mechanism. PERB held the City violated both its Charter and the MMBA by refusing to arbitrate, found bad faith bargaining, enjoined the City from refusing to arbitrate, and ordered the City to make the MAA whole for extra bargaining costs plus interest. The City petitioned for a writ of extraordinary relief under Government Code section 3542, and the Court of Appeal issued a writ of review.

The Court of Appeal reversed in the published case of City and County of San Francisco v. Public Employment Relations Board -Case No. A173302 (June 2026). It held that the MAA’s just cause proposals are not eligible for binding interest arbitration under the Charter, vacated PERB’s finding that the City committed an MMBA violation, and set aside the associated remedies.

The court began with the standard of review, drawing a sharp line. Courts defer to PERB’s construction of labor laws within its jurisdiction, such as the MMBA, and will follow that construction unless clearly erroneous. But the Charter is not a labor law – it is “the supreme law of the City” – and PERB receives no deference when construing it. Instead, the City’s interpretation of its own charter receives “great weight,” particularly as to the broad powers of its Civil Service Commission.

Construing the Charter de novo, the court found independent textual bases for excluding the proposals from arbitration.

The Commission carve-out (section A8.409-3), while restating the City’s duty to bargain in good faith, also provides that “matters within the jurisdiction of the Commission which establish, implement and regulate the civil service merit system shall not be subject to bargaining under this part.” Tracing the word “part” through related provisions (sections A8.409, A8.409-1, A8.409-6, and 16.116, which collects these sections as “Appendix A”), the court held that “part” necessarily includes the binding interest arbitration provisions of section A8.409-4. It then held the at-will status of exempt attorneys falls squarely within the carved-out matters: exempt employees are part of the City’s civil service merit system (sections 10.100, 10.101, and Commission rule 114), and altering their at-will status implicates the merit system’s “definitions, administration and organization,” the “standards . . . for employment . . . and appointment,” and the “designation of positions as exempt.” The Commission’s own rule treating exempt employees as serving at pleasure was entitled to deference.

The compliance carve-out (section A8.409-4(g)). Separately, the impasse procedures “shall not apply” to any rule or policy “necessary to ensure compliance with . . . local laws, ordinances or regulations,” and disputes over such determinations “may be challenged in a court of competent jurisdiction” rather than arbitrated. In rejecting the proposals, the court reasoned, the City acted to ensure compliance with section 10.104 and Commission rule 114—so the proposals were exempt from arbitration on that ground as well.

The court reinforced these readings with the measures’ legislative history. San Francisco voters have repeatedly affirmed the at-will status of City attorneys and, in 1976, rejected a measure that would have allowed removal only for cause; yet the ballot materials for the interest arbitration provisions never suggested that unelected arbitrators could override section 10.104 and strip exempt employees of at-will status. Because at-will status is “such a vital condition of employment,” the court inferred the voters never intended that result. It also deferred to the City’s longstanding and consistent position that the at-will status of exempt employees is not arbitrable.

Finally, because the just cause proposals were in fact ineligible for arbitration, PERB’s sole basis for finding bad faith – the City’s statements that the proposals were ineligible – collapsed. The court therefore vacated the bad faith finding and its remedies.

Two California policyholders, Brian Guthrie and Grady Lee Harris, Jr., sued Transamerica Life Insurance Company on behalf of themselves and a proposed class, alleging the company violated all three prongs of California’s Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 17200 et seq.) – the unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practice prongs – in connection with a term life product called “Trendsetter LB.”

Transamerica markets two products in its Trendsetter line. The older, more basic Trendsetter Super offers term life coverage plus a single “accelerated death benefit” allowing an insured to draw down part of the death benefit early in the event of a qualifying terminal illness. Beginning in 2012, the company introduced Trendsetter LB, a bundled product that adds two more accelerated death benefits – for qualifying chronic and critical illness – delivered through one endorsement and two riders that are automatically included. The bundled LB policy is sold at a single premium rate.

The plaintiffs’ grievance centered on language in the policy’s “data pages.” A schedule listing “ADDITIONAL BENEFITS WHICH ARE PROVIDED BY RIDER” showed “NONE” and “NO CHARGE” in the plaintiffs’ policies, and the premium summary referred to the “INITIAL ANNUAL PREMIUM FOR POLICY EXCLUDING RIDERS.” Plaintiffs argued this language misleadingly portrayed the automatically included chronic and critical illness benefits as free, when (they claimed) Transamerica conceded in discovery that the total premium actually embedded charges for those benefits.

Notably, the plaintiffs did not claim they failed to receive the coverage they paid for. Their complaint was that the premium was never broken down into separate line items for each bundled component, which they said obscured the existence of the cheaper Trendsetter Super alternative.

For purposes of their class certification motion, the plaintiffs sharply narrowed their theory. They dropped any comparison to Trendsetter Super and rested certification solely on the proposition that the standard form policy language itself – read in isolation – was misleading and therefore amenable to common, classwide proof.

The Alameda County Superior Court granted certification in part and denied it in part in August 2024, and after two rounds of clarification ultimately denied certification entirely.The court found the proposed class numerous (Transamerica had issued more than 38,000 Trendsetter LB policies in California since May 2017) and ascertainable. The dispositive problem was predominance.

For the unlawful prong – premised on Insurance Code sections 330 through 332, which govern concealment and a party’s duty to communicate material facts – the court held common issues did not predominate. The claim “necessarily concern[ed]” not only the standard policy text but also marketing materials and oral representations by agents, which would differ from one purchaser to the next. The court reached the same conclusion on the unfair prong (applying the requirement that an unfair practice be “tethered” to a legislatively declared policy) and the fraudulent prong (which asks whether the language is “likely to deceive” a reasonable consumer), because each turned on the same individualized inquiry.

The court initially certified narrow unlawful/unfair claims tied to section 10127.9 – the “free look” statute requiring a cancellation-and-refund notice – reasoning that whether the standard policy contained the required notice was a common question. But after the plaintiffs sought clarification, the court confirmed that this certified claim was limited to whether Transamerica failed to provide the statutory notice. The plaintiffs then asked the court to deny certification outright, conceding they had never brought, and would not bring, a notice-failure claim. The court obliged, denying certification in full.

The Court of Appeal affirmed in the published case of Guthrie v. Transamerica Life Insurance Company, -Case No. A171526 (June 2026). It held the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying class certification, and Transamerica was awarded its costs on appeal.

The plaintiffs’ appeal rested on a single premise: because their pared-down claims relied solely on “unambiguous” form language, common issues necessarily predominated. The appellate court rejected that premise on two independent grounds.

First, the language is not unambiguous. Reading the contract as a whole, as required by Civil Code section 1641, the court found the data-page language “ambiguous” on its face. Plaintiffs had ignored numerous other rider-related provisions – including a “Schedules of Premiums” paragraph stating that premiums “(excluding premiums for certain Riders)” remain level, the riders’ own recitals that they were issued “in consideration of … payment of the premiums for the policy,” and an application item identical to the disputed data-page language that lists only optional additional riders. At best, the court said, plaintiffs offered “an arguably plausible reading,” not the outright misstatement they claimed. Because the plaintiffs themselves had argued certification depended on the language being unambiguous, they effectively conceded that ambiguity would defeat certification. Under Brinker, the court found it proper to evaluate this merits-adjacent issue because it was germane to the certification question.

Second, even assuming the language were misleading, that common question would not establish common liability. Drawing on two governing precedents, the court explained that the unlawful and unfair claims – grounded in sections 330 through 332 – require examining not just the policy text but what additional information was conveyed to each purchaser. The statutes themselves (§ 10295.12) contemplate that agents will discuss accelerated death benefit policies with applicants, so Transamerica could introduce marketing materials and other extrinsic evidence in its defense, generating individualized issues. As for the fraud prong, the court noted that the data pages are customized: an insured who buys optional riders sees different rider and premium entries than one who declines them, so even “within the four corners” the policies differ. Because the plaintiffs purchased through agents and alleged no way to buy the product on policy language alone, liability could not be resolved on a classwide basis.

When a state safety regulator wants records to figure out whether a dead gig-economy worker was an employee at all, does it have to win that question first – in a separate lawsuit – before it can even ask? In this new published decision, the Court of Appeal says no. California’s workplace-safety agency can subpoena the records it needs to establish its own jurisdiction. But the court also reined in a trial-court order that had handed the agency everything it asked for, sending the case back to trim overbroad requests.

In this case Dino Park fell down a flight of stairs after making a delivery for Uber Eats on May 26, 2023, and died several days later from his injuries. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office notified the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) of the death on June 7, 2023. Park’s widow had limited information but provided tax returns showing he had been paid by Uber Technologies, Inc. Cal/OSHA tried to arrange a meeting with Uber to discuss Park’s employment status and the circumstances of his death; Uber declined.

On September 5, 2023, the agency served Uber with an administrative subpoena under Government Code section 11181, subdivision (e), and Labor Code section 6314, subdivision (c), seeking 20 categories of records bearing on whether Park was an employee or independent contractor, the circumstances of his death, and records about other similarly situated drivers. Uber produced nothing, raising only objections: that the agency lacked jurisdiction because Park was an independent contractor under Proposition 22 (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 7448 et seq.); that it had no consent or inspection warrant; that the requests sought confidential business information, invaded third-party privacy, and were overbroad and irrelevant.

Cal/OSHA petitioned to compel compliance (Gov. Code, § 11187). While that petition was pending, the agency issued a citation to Uber under Labor Code section 6317—$5,000 for failing to immediately report the death and $1,350 for failing to maintain an effective injury and illness prevention program—which Uber did not appeal. After a June 2024 hearing, the trial court granted the petition and ordered Uber to produce all 20 categories of documents within 30 days, without limiting or modifying any request. Uber appealed, and  the Court of Appeal granted a writ of supersedeas staying the order pending the appeal.

In the published case of Division of Occupational Safety and Health v. Uber Technologies, Inc., Case No. B340734 (June 2026), the Court of Appeal affirmed the order compelling production but reversed it to the extent it required production of all requested documents without limitation, and remanded for the trial court to reconsider the scope of the requests. In short: the agency’s power to subpoena was upheld at every turn, but the unbounded breadth of the order was not.

The court grounded its analysis in the California Supreme Court case of  Brovelli v. Superior Court (1961) 56 Cal.2d 524, which holds that an administrative subpoena is valid so long as it (1) inquires into matters the agency is authorized to investigate, (2) is not too indefinite, and (3) seeks information reasonably relevant to the inquiry – agencies may investigate, like a grand jury, on mere suspicion the law is being violated “or even just because it wants assurance that it is not” (quoting United States v. Morton Salt Co. (1950) 338 U.S. 632).

But the order’s scope swept too far. The court found the record underdeveloped on the relevance of several requests, particularly Nos. 8 through 20, whose breadth was magnified by expansive definitions. The subpoena defined “DRIVER(S)” and “USER(S)” to include any “person” who uses Uber’s platform – language broad enough to reach customers – yet nothing explained how records about platform users or customers bore on Park’s employment status, the circumstances of his death, or Uber’s training and prevention practices.

On remand, the trial court must reconsider the scope of the requests under Brovelli and issue a new, appropriately tailored production order.

A data breach at an education-technology company gave the California Supreme Court its first occasion to define how far two privacy statutes reach. The decision is a split outcome: the company escapes these particular claims because the plaintiff did not adequately plead that it was a covered entity, but in getting there the Court rejected a defense-friendly rule that had governed medical-privacy breach cases for over a decade – holding that a plaintiff need not prove anyone “actually viewed” the stolen data.

Illuminate Education, Inc. is an education-technology company that maintains a nationwide platform storing K–12 student data – including medical information such as diagnoses and treatment plans – to help educators evaluate students, monitor progress, and build educational plans. It contracts with the Ventura County Office of Education, which serves plaintiff J.M.’s school district. J.M. provided his medical information to the district, which in turn passed it to Illuminate.

In January 2022, Illuminate discovered suspicious activity and later confirmed that databases containing student information had been subject to unauthorized access. It notified families in June 2022, stating there was no evidence of actual or attempted misuse. J.M. alleged he subsequently received solicitations at an address he had given only to Illuminate, plus odd calls about “phantom Amazon accounts.” Through his guardian ad litem, he brought a putative class action under two statutes: the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA; Civ. Code, § 56 et seq.) and the Customer Records Act (CRA; Civ. Code, § 1798.80 et seq.).

The Trial court sustained Illuminate’s demurrer without leave to amend, finding J.M. failed to adequately allege that Illuminate was a “provider of health care,” “contractor,” or “administrator” under the CMIA, failed to allege a qualifying “disclosure” or “release,” and could not sue under the CRA because Illuminate’s customer was the County Office of Education, not J.M.

The Court of Appeal reversed, holding that Illuminate fell within both statutes, that J.M. had stated causes of action, and that denying leave to amend was an abuse of discretion. It treated students like J.M. as the “ultimate ‘customers,’ consumers, and beneficiaries” of Illuminate’s services and found a five-month notice delay supported the CRA claim.

The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal and remanded in the case of J.M. v. Illuminate Education, Inc, No. S286699 (May 2026) reaching three holdings. J.M. did not sufficiently allege that Illuminate is a “provider of health care” under section 56.06, so his Confidentiality of Medical Information Act claims fail. A plaintiff need not allege that medical information was actually viewed by an unauthorized party. Confidentiality is breached when information is exposed to a significant risk of unauthorized access or use. J.M. did not sufficiently allege that he is Illuminate’s “customer,” so his Customer Records Act claim fails. The Supreme Court left it to the lower courts to decide whether J.M. may amend his complaint in light of these holdings.

Section 56.06 of the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act covers businesses that maintain medical information in order to make it available to an individual or health care provider upon request, for the purpose of letting the individual manage that information or for diagnosis and treatment. J.M.’s allegations described a tool for educators to assess and plan – not a service that lets individuals manage their own records or that supplies information to clinicians for diagnosis. The Court noted the Legislature has specified that school dyslexia screening is “a flag for potential risk,” not a diagnosis (Ed. Code, § 53008, subd. (l)). Legislative history confirmed the reading: the statute was built around services like MedicAlert and personal-health-record companies (e.g., WebMD-style tools that let consumers build and share their own records), which Illuminate is not. The Court stressed the statute is broad and technology-adaptive but still has limits – it does not sweep in any entity that stores medical information.

The Court took aim at a line of authority requiring proof that an unauthorized person actually viewed the data – Regents of the University of California v. Superior Court (2013) 220 Cal.App.4th 549, Sutter Health v. Superior Court (2014) 227 Cal.App.4th 1546, and Vigil v. Muir Medical Group IPA, Inc. (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 197. Reading section 56.101 together with section 56.36, subdivision (b) – which allows $1,000 in nominal damages even when a plaintiff suffered no actual or threatened harm – the Court concluded liability turns on the entity’s negligent conduct, not on whether harm materialized.

An “actually viewed” rule would be nearly impossible to plead or prove (breach victims rarely know what a hacker did, and AI-driven cybercrime can misuse data without anyone reading it), and would gut a remedial statute that must be construed broadly (Pulliam v. HNL Automotive Inc. (2022) 13 Cal.5th 127). The proper test, the Court held, is whether information was exposed to a significant risk of unauthorized access or use – a flexible standard that distinguishes “smash-and-grab” hardware theft from data-targeted breaches and accounts for factors like the form, duration, and extent of the breach and any mitigation. Loss of possession is relevant but neither necessary nor automatically sufficient. The Court disapproved Regents, Sutter Health, and Vigil to the extent inconsistent.

The Customer Records Act (CRA) authorizes suit only by a “customer” – defined as someone who provides personal information to a business to purchase, lease, or obtain a service from that business (§ 1798.80, subd. (c)). The County Office of Education, not J.M., bought Illuminate’s services; J.M. sought educational services from his school district. The Court rejected the Court of Appeal’s “intended beneficiary” theory, noting the Legislature deliberately limited suit to an injured “customer” rather than any “consumer” or “individual” (Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel, LLC (2021) 11 Cal.5th 858), and observed that other laws (e.g., the California Consumer Privacy Act) offer broader avenues for residents.

California’s workers’ compensation fee schedules continue to hold the line on inflation for most scheduled medical services, but a new California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI) study finds that a growing share of treatment rendered to injured workers in the state is billed under unlisted codes that fall outside fee schedule pricing controls, creating a new and increasingly important source of medical cost growth.

The new CWCI study, the second in a series on workers’ comp medical inflation, uses data from the Institute’s Industry Research Information System (IRIS) database to examine medical payments from 2017 through 2024. The results show that while professional services and facility fees consistently accounted for about 70% of all California workers’ comp medical spending, the strongest inflationary pressures came from professional services billed under codes that are not listed in the state’s Official Medical Fee Schedule (OMFS), where prices often grew far faster than applicable fee schedule benchmarks. Among the key findings:

– – The average payment per professional service transaction increased 33.2% between 2017 and 2024, exceeding the 25.9% growth in the Medicare Economic Index (MEI).
– – Total reimbursements for unlisted professional service codes more than doubled during the 8-year study period, as average payments rose 106.7%, while their share of professional service payments increased from 5.6% to 14.4%.
– – A single code, 97799 (unlisted physical medicine and rehabilitation), accounted for nearly half of all unlisted professional service payments in 2024, with an average payment of $1,663 per transaction.
– – Unlisted codes for durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies (DMEPOS) increased from 41.9% of DMEPOS payments in 2017 to 50.1% in 2024, surpassing scheduled DMEPOS codes for the first time.
– – Medical-legal costs surged following the 2021 Medical-Legal Fee Schedule revision, with average payments increasing 35.1% above 2017 levels by the first full year of implementation.
– – Medical interpreter expenses were driven primarily by utilization rather than price, as the percentage of claims involving interpreter services nearly tripled between 2017 and 2024.
– – Pharmacy was the only major medical category to show sustained spending declines, largely due to reduced utilization following adoption of the MTUS Drug Formulary and opioid prescribing reforms.
– – Inpatient hospital utilization continued a long-term decline as inpatient discharges fell 33.8% from 2017 to 2024.

The analysis noted that the scheduled professional services generally behaved as intended under the OMFS, with price growth closely tracking established inflation benchmarks. In contrast, the unlisted professional service codes experienced substantially higher price growth and increased utilization, while in DMEPOS, the growing use of unlisted codes was the key cost driver. Thus, the report concludes that while the OMFS remains effective at controlling payments for scheduled services, its influence is diminishing as more treatment is billed under unlisted codes. Given the growing use of multidisciplinary pain programs, platelet-rich plasma injections, specialized medical equipment, and other unlisted medical services, policymakers and system stakeholders are likely to face growing pressure to address the widening gap between fee schedule-governed and market-rate pricing.

CWCI has issued its study, Medical Inflation and Cost Drivers in California Workers’ Compensation as a Report to the Industry, available free to CWCI members and subscribers. Others may purchase a copy for $23 by calling 510-251-9470.