Shirley Nichols v. Citibank ( 2018 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
MAR 19 2018
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
SHIRLEY NICHOLS, No. 16-56042
Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No.
2:16-cv-01215-DSF-MRW
v.
CITIBANK, N.A., et al., MEMORANDUM*
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Dale S. Fischer, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted March 5, 2018
Pasadena, California
Before: REINHARDT and NGUYEN, Circuit Judges, and SETTLE,** District
Judge.
Plaintiff-Appellant Shirley Nichols (“Nichols”) appeals the district court’s
order granting summary judgment on her class action claims in favor of
Defendants-Appellees Citibank, N.A., Citigroup, Inc., and Citimortgage, Inc.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Benjamin H. Settle, United States District Judge for
the Western District of Washington, sitting by designation.
(collectively “Citibank”). Nichols argues that the district court erred in
determining that the class action settlement release in Raniere v. Citigroup Ins.,
No. 1:11-cv-2448-RWS (S.D.N.Y.), barred Nichols’s present claims. “We review
de novo a district court’s grant of summary judgment,” Fisher v. Kealoha, 855
F.3d 1067, 1069 (9th Cir. 2017) (citation omitted), and affirm.
1. When assessing the valid scope of a class action settlement agreement,
we employ an “identical factual predicate” rule under which “a federal court may
release not only those claims alleged in the complaint, but also a claim based on
the identical factual predicate as that underlying the claims in the settled class
action.” Reyn’s Pasta Bella, LLC v. Visa USA, Inc., 442 F.3d 741, 748 (9th Cir.
2006) (quotation marks omitted). Nichols argues that for a class action release to
be preclusive, “the claims must be ‘identical’ to be barred.” However, our
precedent states the opposite:
A settlement agreement may preclude a party from bringing a related
claim in the future “even though the claim was not presented and
might not have been presentable in the class action,” but only where
the released claim is “based on the identical factual predicate as that
underlying the claims in the settled class action.”
Hesse v. Sprint Corp., 598 F.3d 581, 590 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting Williams v.
Boeing Co., 517 F.3d 1120, 1133 (9th Cir. 2008); Class Plaintiffs v. City of Seattle,
955 F.2d 1268, 1287 (9th Cir. 1992)) (emphasis added). While a subsequent claim
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must be based on an identical factual predicate for a class action release to be
preclusive, there is no requirement that the claims be identical.
2. Nichols fails to distinguish the factual predicates of her present claims
from the factual predicate of Raniere even though she focuses her present claims
narrowly on a specific method whereby Citibank miscalculated the base wages
used to compute the overtime wages owed to non-exempt employees. The
operative complaint for the class action in the Raniere settlement was predicated
on allegations of (1) unpaid wages due to the misclassification of non-exempt
employees, (2) inaccurate overtime calculations, once employees were properly
classified as non-exempt, that “routinely fell short of what is required under the
FLSA and applicable state laws,” and (3) inaccurate wage statements that “did not
accurately reflect all hours worked, including overtime.” That the underlying
factual predicate for the settlement release in Raniere encompassed overtime wage
claims beyond the misclassification of non-exempt employees is established by the
fact that Nichols had no such misclassification claim and still was paid $158.16 to
release her other wage claims. While Raniere covered a broader range of alleged
misconduct that included the misclassification of employees as exempt from
overtime, both the settlement in Raniere and Nichols’s present claims are
predicated on allegations that Citibank failed to pay and accurately disclose or
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compute wages for the purpose of calculating overtime payments to employees
properly classified as non-exempt. Accordingly, the Raniere settlement release
and Nichols’s present claims are based on the same factual predicate.
AFFIRMED.
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