Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court

I.

INTRODUCTION

Real party in interest Alicia Moreno sued petitioner Garden Fresh Restaurant Corporation (Garden Fresh), her former employer, for claims related to a variety of alleged Labor Code violations. Moreno filed the action as a putative class action, and also pursued representative relief under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) (Lab. Code, § 2698 et seq.).

Garden Fresh moved to compel arbitration of Moreno’s claims, on an individual basis only, based on two arbitration agreements that Moreno signed during her tenure as an employee of Garden Fresh. Garden Fresh requested that the court dismiss Moreno’s class and representative claims, arguing that the parties’ arbitration agreements did not contemplate class- or representative-based arbitration. The trial court granted the motion to compel arbitration, but specifically left to the arbitrator to decide the question whether the arbitration agreements between the parties contemplated class-wide and/or representative arbitration, thereby denying Garden Fresh’s request that only Moreno’s individual claims be sent to arbitration.

Garden Fresh filed a petition for a writ of mandate in this…