Hernandez

I.

INTRODUCTION

Ivan Vasquez appeals from a judgment entered after defendant SFM, LLC (SFM), the parent company of Sprouts Farmers’ Markets grocery stores, and plaintiffs Julio Hernandez, Carmen Valenzuela and Jeffrey Wasik (the Hernandez Plaintiffs) settled a case involving numerous PAGA and class action claims brought on behalf of all nonexempt California employees for

violations of the Labor Code (the Hernandez action) for a total of $1,200,000.1 Under the terms of the settlement in the Hernandez action, the parties allocated $300,000 of the total settlement amount to the PAGA claims, and allocated the remaining $900,000 to the class claims. In proceedings in the trial court, the parties to the Hernandez action filed bifurcated motions seeking the court’s approval of the settlement of the PAGA claims and the class claims. The parties first sought court approval of the $300,000 allocated to address the PAGA claims and obtained the requisite approval from the court for that portion of the settlement before

Two days prior to the scheduled oral argument in this case, a separate set of appealing parties—Kelly Munoz, Taylor Woodworth, and Marissa Torres (the Munoz…