Peter Leverman v. Honeywell International Inc.

Summary

The United States District Court for the Central District of California denied Peter Leverman’s motion to remand a putative California wage-and-hour class action removed under the Class Action Fairness Act. The court held that Defendant established by a preponderance of the evidence that the amount in controversy exceeded $5 million, accepting certain workweek, unpaid-wage, overtime, and wage-statement penalty assumptions while rejecting an inflated overtime estimate as unsupported.

Holdings

1. The amount-in-controversy requirement was satisfied because reasonable estimates of unpaid on-call wages, unpaid overtime, attorney's fees, and some amount of wage-statement penalties established an amount in controversy of at least $5,079,984.38.
2. Honeywell reasonably calculated the relevant workweeks by using employment records and the hire and termination dates of putative class members.
3. Honeywell could reasonably assume one unpaid straight-time on-call hour and one unpaid overtime hour per workweek because those assumptions were grounded in the complaint's pattern-and-practice allegations.
4. Attorney's fees were properly included in the amount-in-controversy calculation and could reasonably be estimated at 25 percent of the recovery.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Honeywell established by a preponderance of the evidence that the amount in controversy exceeded CAFA's $5 million jurisdictional threshold.
2. Whether Honeywell's assumptions concerning the number of relevant workweeks, unpaid straight-time on-call wages, and unpaid overtime wages were reasonable and sufficiently grounded in the complaint and evidence.
3. Whether attorney's fees could be included in the amount-in-controversy calculation and reasonably estimated at 25 percent of the recovery.

Disposition

other