The Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles has applied the Supreme Court’s Pioneer Electronics decision to wage and hour cases, seemingly eliminating any possibility that this opportunity for class counsel to go client-fishing would be limited to consumer cases. I blogged on Pioneer Electronics here, and there was a good deal of other commentary on it in January. Essentially, the Cal Supremes held in Pioneer Electronics that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by ordering the defendant to provide customer contact information to class counsel as to all customers who failed to respond to an “opt-out notice.”
Now, in Belaire-West Landscape, Inc. v. Superior Court, No. B194844, the Court of Appeal has held that there is even more reason to allow this disclosure in a wage and hour case, that the disclosure did not involve a “serious invasion of privacy,” and that even if it did, the balancing of interests would favor disclosure. “Disclosure of the contact information with an opt-out notice would not appear to unduly compromise either informational privacy or autonomy privacy . . . .” UCL Practitioner comments from the plaintiff perspective here.
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