Williams v. Super. Ct.

Background Beginning in January 2012, plaintiff Michael Williams was an employee at a retail store operated by Marshalls of CA (Marshalls) in Costa Mesa, California. On March 22, 2013, after a little more than one year of employment, he brought a representative action against Marshalls under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) (Lab. Code, §§ 2698-2699.5), alleging Marshalls failed to provide its employees with meal and rest breaks or premium pay in lieu thereof (Lab. Code, §§ 226.7 & 512),1 to provide accurate wage statements (§ 226, subd. (a)), to reimburse employees for necessary business-related expenses (§§ 2800 & 2802), and to pay all earned wages during employment (§ 204). On February 5, 2014, plaintiff served special interrogatories seeking production of the names and contact information of all nonexempt Marshalls employees in California who had worked for the company beginning on March 22, 2012. Marshalls objected to the discovery on the ground it was irrelevant, overbroad, unduly burdensome, and implicated the privacy rights of its employees. Plaintiff met and conferred with Marshalls, offering to address its privacy concerns with a “Belaire-West…