concluding that a class of city police officers, sergeants, and dispatchers were entitled to compensation for overtime hours worked as a result of the limitations placed on their activities and conduct during mealtime periods
How later courts described this case
- concluding that a class of city police officers, sergeants, and dispatchers were entitled to compensation for overtime hours worked as a result of the limitations placed on their activities and conduct during mealtime periods
- concluding that officers’ on-call mealtime was compensable hours worked
- analyzing whether meal periods were so circumscribed as to constitute “hours worked”
- California Supreme Court specifically declined to reach the FLSA issue and instead decided the case under municipal regulations
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
KLAUS, J.
I concur fully in the result, but respectfully submit that the court’s analysis is needlessly complicated. Given a reasonably sane employer, the two-step analysis is 50 percent illusory: is it conceivable that employer-imposed restrictions on conduct during Code 7 time are not “primarily directed toward the fulfillment of the employer’s requirements and policies?” 1 Discussions about the identity of the beneficiary of these restrictions obscure the only real question which, in this case, is quite simple: did the limitations placed by the city on Code 7 time so restrict the officers’ ability to engage in private pursuits that the time was, in effect, on-duty time with permission to eat a meal—hardly more than a coffee break? Clearly, that question must be answered in the affirmative.
Ertola, J., * concurred.
It is true that the two-step analysis was also used in Los Angeles Fire & Protective League v. City of Los Angeles (1972) 23 Cal.App.3d 67, 76 [ 99 Cal.Rptr. 908 ]. A quick glance at that decision reveals the doubtful relevance of the first step to the question under consideration in that case as well as here: the decisions relied on are Garzoli v. Workmen’s Comp. App. Bd. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 502 [ 86 Cal.Rptr. 1 , 467 P.2d 833 ] and Guest v. Workmen’s Comp. App. Bd. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 670 [ 87 Cal.Rptr. 193 , 470 P.2d 1 ], In each case it was held that workers’ compensation was not barred by the going and coming rule—in Garzoli because the employee was riding a motorcycle to work as, in effect, required by his job, in Guest because he was on a special errand. In neither case was there an issue as to whether at the time of the accident in question the employee was on duty for pay purposes.
Assigned by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.