Mora v. Marten Transport, Ltd. ( 2024 )

1 2 3 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 7 HECTOR MORA, Case No. 23-cv-06004-JD 8 Plaintiff, ORDER RE REMAND v. 9 10 MARTEN TRANSPORT, LTD., Defendant. 11 12 Plaintiff Hector Mora, on behalf of himself and a putative class of current and former truck 13 drivers employed by defendant Marten Transport, Ltd. (Marten), sued Marten on a variety of wage 14 and hour claims under California state law. Dkt. No. 1, Ex. C. The complaint was originally filed 15 in the Santa Clara Superior Court, and was removed by Marten under the Class Action Fairness 16 Act of 2005 (CAFA), 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d). Dkt. No. 1. 17 Mora says that the case should be remanded because Marten has not plausibly established 18 the $5 million amount in controversy required for CAFA jurisdiction. Dkt. No. 12. The parties’ 19 familiarity with the record is assumed. Because Marten used unreasonable and unsupported 20 assumptions to estimate the amount in controversy, it has not met its burden of demonstrating that 21 $5 million or more is in play, and the case is remanded to the Superior Court. 22 DISCUSSION 23 The Court has detailed the standards for CAFA removal in other cases, and incorporates 24 that discussion here. See, e.g., Anderson v. Starbucks Corp., 556 F. Supp. 3d 1132, 1135-37 (N.D. 25 Cal. 2020) (and cases cited therein); Moore v. Dnata US Inflight Catering LLC, No. 20-cv-08028- 26 JD, 2021 WL 3033577 (N.D. Cal. July 19, 2021). 27 To start, Mora’s repeated contention that “[t]he removing party must submit ‘summary- 1 taken. Dkt. No. 15 at 3 (emphasis added); see also Dkt. No. 12 at 3 (“Defendant’s Notice of 2 Removal is devoid of any factual and evidentiary support sufficient to establish that the amount in 3 controversy has been satisfied.”). The law has been well established for some time now that “a 4 defendant’s notice of removal need include only a plausible allegation that the amount in 5 controversy exceeds the jurisdictional threshold, and does not need evidentiary submissions.” 6 Anderson, 556 F. Supp. 3d at 1136 (cleaned up); see also Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co., 7 LLC v. Owens, 574 U.S. 81, 84 (2014) (a notice of removal “need not contain evidentiary 8 submissions.”). 9 Even so, now that Mora has made a factual attack on defendant’s removal allegations, 10 Marten bears the burden of establishing by a preponderance of the evidence that the amount in 11 controversy exceeds $5 million. See Anderson, 556 F. Supp. 3d at 1136 (citing Harris v. KM 12 Indus., Inc., 980 F.3d 694, 699 (9th Cir. 2020)). In this situation, the plaintiff is not required to 13 proffer his own evidence on the actual amount in controversy, and may instead rely, as Mora has 14 done here, on “a reasoned argument as to why any assumptions on which [defendant’s numbers] 15 are based are not supported by evidence.” Harris, 980 F.3d at 700. 16 Marten has made Mora’s job considerably easier by offering next to nothing in the way of 17 evidence. A declaration by Susan Deetz, the Director of Human Resources for Marten Transport, 18 offers only these facts: (1) between October 19, 2019, to the filing of Marten’s notice of removal 19 on November 20, 2023, there “are at least 1,398 truck drivers who drove for Marten in 20 California”; (2) approximately 471 of those drivers “were Marten’s current drivers”; 21 (3) “approximately 927 drivers were Marten’s former drivers”; and (4) during the relevant time 22 period, “truck drivers who drove for Marten in California were paid on a weekly basis.” Dkt. 23 No.14-1 (Deetz Decl.) ¶¶ 3-6. 24 That is the sum total of Marten’s ostensible evidence that the amount in controversy 25 exceeds $5 million. On that anemic record, Marten proposes a variety of alternative calculations 26 in its attempt to meet the $5 million amount. See Dkt. No. 14 at 8 nn.2-3, id. at 10 n.4, id. at 11 27 n.5, id. at 13 n.6, and id. at 14 n.7. These calculations are based, respectively, on minimum wage 1 penalties, untimely wages during employment penalties, untimely wages at separation penalties, 2 wage statement claim penalties, recordkeeping claim penalties, and attorneys’ fees. Id. 3 Much of this is of scant value because the calculations are based purely on assumptions 4 about the number of weeks worked by class members, without any factual support whatsoever. 5 For example, Marten posits that the minimum wage penalties for the 471 total current drivers, 6 assuming a violation rate of one violation per pay period, is as follows: 7 3 years (statute of limitations) x 50 weekly pay periods (assuming 2 weeks off per year) x 1 violation per pay period = 150 violations per 8 driver. (1 initial violation x $100) + (149 subsequent violations x $250) = $37,350 in penalties per driver. 471 drivers x $37,350 = 9 $17,591,850. Dkt. No. 14 at 8 n.2. Marten also offers a more restrained version of the same calculation, 10 assuming a lower violation rate of one minimum wage violation every other week, but the 11 calculation is the same in its reliance on workweek assumptions: 12 Assumption of only 75 violations per driver. (1 initial violation x 13 $100) + (74 subsequent violations x $250) = $18,600 in penalties per driver. 471 drivers x $18,600 = $8,760,600. 14 Id. n.3. 15 Critically, Marten did not offer any evidence that might validate or make reasonable its 16 assumption that each of the 471 “current” drivers worked 50 weekly pay periods for the entire 3- 17 year time period at issue. Marten tries to defend its position by stating that it did “not assume that 18 all truck drivers worked every pay period,” and instead “accounted for 2 weeks off per year per 19 truck driver.” Id. at 7. But why this additional assumption might be reasonable is again not 20 explained. Marten curiously relies on Bryant v. NCR Corporation, 284 F. Supp. 3d 1147, 1150 21 (S.D. Cal. 2018), for the proposition that it “need not ‘produce business records setting forth the 22 precise number of employees in [the] putative class . . . and the precise calculation of damages 23 alleged to meet its burden regarding the amount in controversy.’” Dkt. No. 14 at 7. That may be, 24 but in Bryant, the removing defendant submitted a declaration from its “Field HR Consultant” in 25 which the consultant stated that he had “reviewed data retrieved from Defendant’s payroll and 26 human resources management system,” and “the current and former customer engineers were 27 employed by Defendant for a total of approximately 74,420 workweeks from November 16, 2013 1 to the present.” 284 F. Supp. 3d at 1150. Where, in Bryant, there was a specific evidentiary 2 proffer of the number of relevant workweeks worked by class members based on a review of 3 defendant’s data, here, Marten has plucked out of thin air its assumption that all 471 drivers 4 worked for 50 weeks a year for 3 years. This is an inadequate showing to meet Marten’s burden 5 of establishing CAFA removal jurisdiction. 6 Most of Marten’s remaining calculations suffer from the same defect. See Dkt. No. 14 at 7 10 n.4 (calculating untimely wages during employment penalties on assumption that 471 drivers 8 worked 50 weekly pay periods during 1-year statute of limitations period);1 id. at 13 n.6 9 (calculating wage statement claim penalties on assumption that 471 drivers worked 50 weekly pay 10 periods during 1-year statute of limitations period); id. at 14 n.7 (calculating recordkeeping claim 11 penalties on assumption that 471 drivers worked 50 weekly pay periods during 1-year statute of 12 limitations period); id. at 14-15 (calculating 25% attorneys’ fees based on minimum wage claim 13 calculations which were based on unsupported workweek assumptions). 14 The one calculation that does not rely on this unsupported workweek assumption is 15 Marten’s calculation for untimely wages at separation penalties. For those penalties, Marten has 16 offered this calculation, assuming that each former driver had some unpaid wages at the time of 17 separation: 18 927 former drivers who drove in California x $12 (the lowest California minimum wage within the proposed 4-year class period) 19 x 10 hours (assuming a full day of driving is 10 hours [the Department of Transportation’s regulations applicable to 20 commercial truck drivers provide that commercial truck drivers may drive a maximum of 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, 21 see 49 C.F.R. § 395.3]) x 30 days = $3,337,200. Because California’s minimum wage steadily increased throughout the 22 proposed class period, applying the higher minimum wage rates would only increase the amount in controversy. 23 Id. at 11-12 n.3. Of the various calculations Marten has offered, this is the only one that comes 24 close to being based on a “chain of reasoning that includes assumptions based on reasonable 25 grounds,” Anderson, 556 F. Supp. 3d at 1136-37 (quotations and citation omitted), but at a total of 26 27 1 $3,337,200, it is not sufficient. Even assuming that a 25% attorney’s fees award could be added to 2 || that amount, which Marten has not specifically argued, the amount would still be only $4,171,500. 3 In sum, Marten has come up short after a full and fair opportunity to present evidence and 4 || arguments for removal under CAPA. It has failed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the 5 evidence that this case puts $5 million or more into play. 6 CONCLUSION 7 The case was improperly removed under CAFA. It is ordered remanded to the Superior 8 Court of California for the County of Santa Clara. 9 IT IS SO ORDERED. 10 Dated: February 8, 2024 11 12 JAMES/PONATO 13 United ftates District Judge 15 16 = 17 Z 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28