# Woods v. C.H. Robinson Company, Inc

> District Court, N.D. California · March 26, 2025

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10831798

## Case

- **Court:** District Court, N.D. California
- **Decided:** March 26, 2025
- **Opinion:** 100trialcourt
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

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## Opinion text

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4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
6
ELIZABETH WOODS,
7 Case No. 25-cv-00294-SK
Plaintiff,
8
v. ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO
9 REMAND
C.H. ROBINSON COMPANY, INC,
10
Defendant. Regarding Docket No. 13
11

12 Plaintiff Elizabeth Woods (“Plaintiff”), a former employee of defendant C.H. Robinson
13 Company, Inc. (“Defendant”) filed this putative class action seeking relief under California’s wage
14 and hour laws. (Dkt. No. 1-1, Ex. A.) This matter comes before the Court upon consideration of
15 Plaintiff’s motion to remand. Both parties consented to magistrate judge jurisdiction. (Dkt. Nos.
16 10, 12.) Having carefully considered the parties’ papers, relevant legal authority, and the record in
17 the case, and having had the benefit of oral argument, the Court hereby GRANTS Plaintiff’s
18 motion for the reasons set forth below.
19 BACKGROUND
20 Plaintiff filed this class action in Contra Costa Superior Court on November 27, 2024.
21 (Id.) The Complaint asserts seven causes of action: (1) failure to pay all overtime wages in
22 violation of California Labor Code §§ 204, 210, 510, 558, 1194, 1198, (2) failure to provide all
23 meal periods in violation of California Labor Code §§ 226.7, 512, and California Civil Code §§
24 3287(b), 3289, (3) failure to provide all rest periods in violation of California Labor Code §§
25 226.7, 516 and California Civil Code §§ 3287(b), 3289, (4) failure to pay all sick time in violation
26 of California Labor Code §§ 246, 558, 1192, 1194.2, 1197.1, 1198, 1199, the applicable Wage
27 Orders, and California Code of Civil Procedure § 1021.5, (5) failure to provide accurate itemized
1 business expenses in violation of § 2802(a), and (7) unfair competition in violation of California
2 Business and Professions Code § 17200 et seq. (Id.) The Complaint did not include an estimate
3 of damages. (Id.)
4 On January 8, 2025, Defendant removed the case to federal court under the Class Action
5 Fairness Act (“CAFA”). (Dkt. No. 1.) In doing so, Defendant argued that Plaintiff’s claims for
6 unpaid overtime wages, meal and rest premiums, wage statement penalties, and unreimbursed
7 business expenses place $8,869,192 in controversy. (Id. at ¶ 37.)
8 Defendant’s calculation of the amount in controversy (“AIC”) relied on analysis conducted
9 by economist Ariel Kumpinsky. (Dkt. No. 1-2.) Kumpinsky reviewed an Excel spreadsheet that
10 contained a list of dates that employees were hired, dates that employees’ employment ended, and
11 rates of pay for the hourly employees who worked for Defendant during the period November 27,
12 2020, through April 13, 2024. (Id.) Kumpinsky concluded that the putative class includes at least
13 564 persons who received an average hourly rate of $28.97. (Id. at ¶ 6.) The putative class
14 members worked at least 59,389 workweeks during the period and received 2,771 wage
15 statements. (Id. at ¶¶. 7-8.) In addition, Defendant made self-described “conservative
16 assumption[s]” about the violation rate for each claim. (Dkt. No. 1, ¶ 18.) Defendant assumed
17 that each putative class member worked one hour of unpaid overtime per workweek, missed one
18 meal break and one rest break per workweek, suffered one wage statement violation for every pay
19 period, and incurred $5 in unreimbursed business expenses per workweek. (Id. at ¶¶ 18, 23, 26,
20 36.)
21 On January 30, 2025, Plaintiff moved to remand the action back to state court, arguing that
22 Defendant’s calculation of AIC rests on unreasonable assumptions about the rate of violation.
23 (Dkt. No. 13.) Both parties submitted briefing. (Dkt. Nos. 13, 14, 15.) The Court heard oral
24 argument on March 24, 2025. (Dkt. No. 22.)
25 ANALYSIS
26 A. The Class Action Fairness Act.
27 CAFA gives federal courts jurisdiction over class actions where the proposed class
1 plaintiff class and any defendant, and the total AIC exceeds $5,000,000, exclusive of interests and
2 costs. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(2), (5)(B); Perez v. Rose Hills Co., __F.4th__, 2025 WL 811096, at *3
3 (9th Cir. 2025). The parties do not contest CAFA’s jurisdictional requirements of minimum
4 diversity and number of class members; the sole dispute is whether the $5 million AIC
5 requirement is satisfied.
6 Where, as here, a complaint does not enumerate the claimed damages, the defendant can
7 establish the AIC through “a plausible allegation that the amount in controversy exceeds the
8 jurisdictional threshold.” Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co., LLC v. Owens (“Dart”), 574 U.S.
9 81, 89 (2014). If the plaintiff contests that allegation, “both sides submit proof and the court
10 decides, by a preponderance of the evidence, whether the amount-in-controversy requirement has
11 been satisfied.” Id. at 88.
12 When a plaintiff contests the truth of the defendant’s allegation—a so-called “factual
13 attack”—“the burden is on the defendant to show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the
14 amount in controversy exceeds the $5 million jurisdictional threshold.” Harris v. KM Indus., Inc.,
15 980 F.3d 694, 699 (9th Cir. 2020). A plaintiff makes a “factual attack” when she makes “a
16 reasoned argument as to why any assumptions on which [the defendant’s jurisdictional
17 allegations] are based are not supported by evidence.” Id. at 700. In sum, while “no antiremoval
18 presumption attends cases invoking CAFA,”1 Dart, 574 U.S. at 89, the defendant bears “the
19 burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that its assumptions were reasonable.”
20 Harris, 980 F.3d at 701.
21 Although “both sides” must be given the opportunity to submit proof when the plaintiff
22 contests the defendant’s AIC allegation, Dart, 574 U.S. at 88, the plaintiff is not required to
23 introduce extrinsic evidence or an alternative AIC calculation to contest the defendant’s AIC
24 allegation. Harris, 980 F.3d at 700 (“[Plaintiff] did not introduce evidence outside the pleadings.
25
1 Plaintiff cites Gaus v. Miles, Inc., 980 F.2d 564 (9th Cir. 1992) (per curiam) for the
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proposition that doubt regarding the right of removal should be resolved in favor of remand. (Dkt.
No. 13, pp. 2-3, 8.) Gaus did not consider removal under CAFA, and the Supreme Court’s
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decision in Dart has since made explicit that “no antiremoval presumption attends cases invoking
1 A factual attack, however, need only challenge the truth of the defendant’s jurisdictional
2 allegations by making a reasoned argument as to why any assumptions on which they are based
3 are not supported by evidence.”); see also Moore v. Dnata US Inflight Catering LLC, No. 20-CV-
4 08028-JD, 2021 WL 3033577, at *2 (N.D. Cal. July 19, 2021) (“A plaintiff need not introduce
5 extrinsic evidence to contest the defendant’s estimates.”). Because the burden falls on the
6 defendant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the AIC requirement is satisfied, “a
7 plaintiff can secure remand by showing, through argument alone, that the defendant has relied on
8 unsupported, unreasonable assumptions.” Benitez v. Hyatt Corp., 722 F. Supp. 3d 1094, 1100
9 (S.D. Cal. 2024) (citing Harris, 980 F.3d at 701).
10 “In calculating the amount in controversy, a removing defendant may make reasonable
11 assumptions based on the plaintiff’s complaint.” Perez, 2025 WL 811096, at *1. “What makes an
12 assumption reasonable may depend on which element of the amount-in-controversy calculation is
13 at issue.” Id. at *3. For example, in a wage-and-hour case, it may make sense to expect a
14 defendant to introduce evidence of the number of employees in the class, as this number “may be
15 most easily determined by examining the defendant's employment records.” Id. at *3. On the
16 other hand, “it makes little sense to require a CAFA defendant to introduce evidence of the
17 violation rate—really, the alleged violation rate—because the defendant likely believes that the
18 real rate is zero and thus that the evidence does not exist.” Id. “For that reason, a CAFA
19 defendant can most readily ascertain the violation rate by looking at the plaintiff's complaint.” Id.
20 “[I]f a violation rate cannot be justified by the allegations in the compliant, it must be justified by
21 something else.” Id. at *4.
22 If the district court determines that a defendant’s assumption “is unreasonable on its face
23 without comparison to a better alternative,” such as when “a defendant provided no evidence or
24 clearly inadequate evidence supporting its valuation for a claim,” the district court may be justified
25 in simply rejecting that assumption without supplying “further assumptions of its own.” Jauregui
26 v. Roadrunner Transp. Servs., Inc., 28 F.4th 989, 994-96 (9th Cir. 2022) (quoting Harris, 980
27 F.3d at 701). When the district court rejects a defendant’s assumption because the court prefers an
1 alternative assumption, rather than reducing the claim value to $0. Id.
2 B. Plaintiff’s Motion to Remand.
3 Defendant estimated an AIC of $8,869,192 based on Plaintiff’s claims of failure to pay all
4 overtime wages, failure to provide meal and rest breaks, failure to provide accurate wage
5 statements, and failure to reimburse necessary business expenses. (Dkt. No. 1.) Plaintiff does not
6 challenge Defendant’s valuation of the claim for failure to reimburse necessary business expenses
7 but argues that the valuations for the remaining claims are based on unreasonable assumptions.
8 (Dkt. No. 13.)2 The Court addresses the claims for failure to pay all overtime wages, failure to
9 provide meal and rest breaks, and failure to provide accurate wage statements in turn.
10 1. Overtime Wages.
11 Under California law, an employee who receives “less than the . . . legal overtime
12 compensation applicable to the employee is entitled to recover in a civil action the unpaid balance
13 of the full amount of this . . . overtime compensation” including interest, attorneys’ fees and costs.
14 Cal. Lab. Code § 1194(a).
15 Plaintiff alleges that Defendant “failed to properly calculate and pay overtime wages at the
16 proper legal rate due to Defendant’s failure to include all forms of compensation/remuneration,
17 including, but not limited to, shift pay, non-discretionary bonuses, commissions, stipends,
18 incentives, and all other forms of remuneration in calculating the ‘regular rate of pay’ for purposes
19 of overtime compensation.” (Dkt. No. 1-1, Ex. A, ¶ 18.)
20 Defendant calculates the AIC of Plaintiff’s overtime claim by assuming each putative class
21 member worked one hour of unpaid overtime per workweek and multiplying that number by the
22 average base hourly rate ($29.97) and the overtime multiplier (1.5). (Dkt. No. 1, ¶ 18.) Based on
23 this calculation, Defendant estimates that Plaintiff’s overtime claim places $2,580,749 in
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2 Defendant did not include all possible sources of recovery in its AIC calculation,
including valuation of Plaintiff’s fourth claim for sick time pay and seventh claim for unfair
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competition, as well as Plaintiff’s demand for attorneys’ fees. (Compare Dkt. No. 1 with Dkt. No.
1-1, Ex. A.) Plaintiff confusingly argues that Defendant’s omission of attorneys’ fees somehow
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results in an inflated estimate of attorneys’ fees. (Dkt. No. 13, pp. 19-20.) Plaintiff does not
1 controversy. (Id.)
2 Defendant’s assumption that each putative class member worked one hour of unpaid
3 overtime per workweek is unreasonable. Plaintiff does not allege that class members worked
4 unpaid overtime hours. Rather, Plaintiff alleges that class members worked underpaid overtime
5 hours because Defendant failed to properly calculate the overtime rate. (Dkt. No. 1-1, Ex. A, ¶
6 18.) Defendant conceded this point during oral argument.
7 The defendant in Petersen v. Gold Bond Bldg. Prods., LLC, No. 24-CV-00617-TSH, 2024
8 WL 3859801 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 16, 2024) made an identical mistake: assuming one full hour of
9 unpaid overtime per employee per workweek when the plaintiff did “not actually allege that any
10 overtime hours were entirely unpaid, but rather that the ‘regular rate of pay’ used to calculate
11 overtime pay was not properly calculated.” Id. at *3. The court found the defendant’s assumption
12 unreasonable because there was “a fundamental mismatch between the type of overtime violation
13 Plaintiff alleges and the type of violation Defendant presumes exists in its calculation of the
14 amount in controversy.” Id. at *4.
15 As in Peterson, Defendant’s calculation is unreasonable because it is based on a claim that
16 Plaintiff did not bring. The claim Plaintiff did bring—underpayment of overtime wages—rests on
17 the difference between the overtime rates actually paid and the overtime rates that were properly
18 calculated. See Salazar v. Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., No. 2:18-CV-05884-SJO-E, 2018
19 WL 4560683, at *5 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 19, 2018). Because neither party provided information about
20 the range of incentive pay and other forms of renumeration, the Court is not in a position to
21 calculate a better alternative to Defendant’s unreasonable assumption. In these circumstances, it is
22 appropriate to assign a value of $0 to the overtime claim. See Jauregui, 28 F.4th at 994-96.
23 2. Meal and Rest Premiums.
24 California Labor Code § 226.7(c) provides that an employee who experiences a meal or
25 rest period violation is entitled to “one additional hour of pay at the employee’s regular rate of
26 compensation for each workday that the meal or rest . . . period is not provided.” Cal. Lab. Code §
27 226.7(c).
1 periods. (Dkt. No. 1-1, Ex. A, ¶¶ 25-30.) Defendant calculates the AIC of Plaintiff’s meal and
2 rest claims by assuming that each putative class member was denied one meal period and one rest
3 period per workweek and multiplying that number by the average base hourly rate ($29.97). (Dkt.
4 No. 1, ¶¶ 25-26.) Plaintiff argues that Defendant’s calculation is unreasonable because, among
5 other things, Defendant did not offer any evidence to support the assumption that all class
6 members worked long enough shifts to entitle them to meal and rest breaks. (Dkt. No. 13, pp. 13-
7 14, 17.)
8 The Ninth Circuit’s decision in Harris is instructive. There, the defendant assumed that
9 every class member missed one meal period and two rest periods per workweek. 980 F.3d at 698.
10 However, the defendant “offered no proof that all of the . . . Class members worked sufficient
11 shifts . . . to qualify them for meal and rest periods.” Id. at 702. Based on this absence of
12 evidence, the Ninth Circuit concluded that defendant’s assumption that all class members were
13 entitled to meal and rest breaks was “factually unsupported and unreasonable.” Id.
14 Here, as in Harris, Defendant offered no proof that all class members worked qualifying
15 shifts. Such an assumption “cannot be justified by the allegations in the complaint,” Perez, 2025
16 WL 811096, at *4, because the Complaint states that class members “worked various shifts, many
17 of which were more than 8.0 hours in a workday.” (Dkt. No. 1-1, Ex. A, ¶ 17 (emphasis added).
18 The language of the Complaint thus suggests that at least some class members did not work
19 qualifying shifts. Cf. Saranay Sonny Ballungay v. Ricoh USA, Inc. et al, No. 2:24-CV-10785-JLS-
20 AGR, 2025 WL 907546 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 24, 2025) (finding that violation rate assumptions were
21 “founded on the allegations of the Complaint” where the complaint included language that
22 “[d]uring all relevant periods, Defendant required Plaintiff and the members of the proposed class
23 to work in excess of 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week.”).
24 As the Complaint does not allege that all class members worked qualifying shifts,
25 Defendant’s assumption to that effect must be justified by “something else.” Perez, 2025 WL
26 811096, at *4. It makes sense to expect a defendant to introduce evidence of the length of
27 employees’ shifts, which can be “easily determined by examining the defendant’s employment
1 at *3; see also e.g., Burgos v. Citibank, N.A., No. 23-CV-01907-AMO, 2023 WL 5532123, at *5
2 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 28, 2023) (distinguishing Harris where the defendant presented evidence about
3 the average length of time worked per employee each workday). Here, Defendant offered no such
4 evidence about the length of class members’ workdays, such as data about average shift length
5 drawn from a representative sample of employees. In fact, Defendant’s notice of removal and
6 accompanying declarations are completely devoid of statements about the length of Defendant’s
7 employees’ shifts. (Dkt. No. 1.)
8 Defendant’s assumption that all class members worked qualifying shifts is not supported
9 by the language of the Complaint or by any other evidence, and it is therefore unreasonable.
10 Because neither party submitted information about the length of class members’ workdays, the
11 Court is not in a position to calculate a better alternative to Defendant’s unreasonable assumption,
12 and it is appropriate to assign a value of $0 to the overtime claim. See Jauregui, 28 F.4th at 994-
13 96.
14 3. Wage Statement Violations.
15 Absent the overtime, meal, and rest claims, Defendants’ AIC calculation necessarily falls
16 below the $5 million jurisdictional threshold. Defendant estimates that $2,550,500 is the amount
17 in controversy for the claim for failure to provide accurate wage statements and that $296,945 is
18 the amount in controversy for the claim for failure to reimburse expenses. (Dkt. No. 1, ¶¶ 31, 36.)
19 The total of these two claims is $2,847,445. (Id.) Because this amount is below $5 million, the
20 Court need not reach the issue of whether Defendant’s wage statement claim valuation is
21 supported by a preponderance of the evidence. See e.g., Siaosi v. TA Operating LLC, No.
22 EDCV231240JGBSHKX, 2023 WL 5985488, at *8 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 14, 2023); Peters v. TA
23 Operating LLC, No. EDCV221831JGBSHKX, 2023 WL 1070350, at *12 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 26,
24 2023).
25 CONCLUSION
26 For the foregoing reasons, Defendant has not carried its burden of proving, by a
27 preponderance of the evidence, that CAFA’s amount-in-controversy requirement is satisfied.
1 Superior Court. If Defendant later discovers evidence demonstrating that the jurisdictional bar is
2 || met, it may once again attempt to remove this case to federal court. See Roth vy. CHA Hollywood
3 || Med. Ctr., 720 F.3d 1121, 1125-26 (9th Cir. 2013).
4 IT IS SO ORDERED.
5 || Dated: March 26, 2025 { ( . la, .
6
SALLIE KIM
7 United States Magistrate Judge
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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/10831798. Public record. Not legal advice.