On July 26, 2018, the California Supreme Court issued its long awaited decision in Troester v. Starbucks Corporation (S234969) on whether California wage and hour law recognizes the de minimis doctrine established by the United States Supreme Court in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. 328 U.S. 680 (1946) for wage claims arising under federal law. Under the federal de minimis rule, small amounts of otherwise compensable work time are not actionable when tracking and paying for it is impractical. Anderson held: “When the matter in issue concerns only a few seconds or minutes of work beyond the scheduled working hours, such trifles may be disregarded. Split-second absurdities are not justified by the actualities of working conditions or by the policy of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It is only when an employee is required to give up a substantial measure of his time and effort that compensable working time is involved.” Id. at 692. In deciding whether compensable work time is de minimis, federal courts consider “(1) the practical administrative difficulty of recording the additional time; (2) the aggregate amount of compensable time; and (3) the regularity of the additional work.” See e.g. Lindow v. U.S. 738 F.2d 1057, 1063 (9th Cir. 1984); Kellar v. Summit Seating Inc., 664 F.3d 169, 176 (7th Cir. 2011); Kosakow v. New Rochelle Radiology Assocs., P.C. 274 F.3d 706, 719 (2d Cir. 2001). Ten minutes or less is generally considered de minimis under federal law. See Lindow, 738 F.2d at 1062. The issue before the California Supreme Court in Troester (certified from the Ninth Circuit) was whether California wage and hour law recognizes the same or a similar rule. Even though de minimis worktime is (by definition) small and insignificant, whether or not a de minimus exception to the requirement to pay for all time worked applies has major implications because relatively small amounts of unpaid wages have the potential to trigger substantial penalties and liability for plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees in California.
The California Supreme Court ultimately issued a narrow ruling that California law would not treat the uncompensated work at issue under the facts of this specific case as de minimis, but left open the possibility that California may recognize some form of de minimis rule in other circumstances. The California Supreme Court decided that the federal de minimis doctrine is not incorporated into California wage and hour law, but acknowledged that de minimis non curat lex (the law cares not for trifles) is an established part of California law generally. However, the Court expressly declined to decide whether de minimis principles apply in the wage and hour context, because even if they did they would not...
