Acevedo

INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff Leonard Acevedo filed against his former employer CashCall, Inc. a lawsuit alleging wage and hour claims (the Acevedo action); he later amended his pleading to seek penalties under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 1 (PAGA) (Lab. Code, § 2699, subd. (a)) (Acevedo PAGA claim). Former CashCall employee Thang Le similarly filed a lawsuit against CashCall for wage and hour claims (the Le action) and later amended to seek penalties under PAGA (the Le PAGA claim). Le and CashCall sought and obtained court approval of a settlement agreement resolving Le’s claims (the settlement agreement). The court dismissed Le’s individual claims and the Le PAGA claim with prejudice. CashCall thereafter successfully sought dismissal of the Acevedo PAGA claim on the ground it was barred by the judgment of dismissal in the Le action by operation of the doctrine of res judicata, now referred to as claim preclusion. We affirm. The trial court did not err by finding that the claim preclusion doctrine barred the Acevedo PAGA claim because, for the reasons we explain in detail post, (1) that claim and the Le PAGA claim involved the same representative…