Starbucks Corp. v. Superior Court
28 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 1032, 86 Cal. Rptr. 3d 482, 168 Cal. App. 4th 1436 (2008)
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Rule of Law:
To have standing to sue for statutory damages under a law prohibiting certain questions on employment applications, an applicant must be a member of the class the statute was enacted to protect and must have suffered the type of harm the statute was designed to prevent.
Facts:
- Starbucks Corporation used a nationwide, two-page job application for store-level employees.
- The application's first page asked the question: “Have you been convicted of a crime in the last seven (7) years?”
- The reverse side of the application contained a 346-word paragraph with a disclaimer for California applicants stating they could omit marijuana possession convictions that were more than two years old.
- Plaintiffs Erik Lords, Hon Yeung, and Donald Brown each applied for a job at Starbucks in early 2005 using this application.
- None of the three plaintiffs had ever been arrested for or convicted of a marijuana-related offense.
- Lords and Yeung both read the California disclaimer and testified that they understood they were not required to disclose marijuana convictions older than two years.
- Lords answered 'No' to the conviction question, while Yeung and Brown both wrote 'Refuse to answer.'
- None of the three plaintiffs were hired by Starbucks.
Procedural Posture:
- Erik Lords, Hon Yeung, and Donald Brown filed a class action lawsuit against Starbucks Corporation in a California trial court.
- The trial court certified a class consisting of all California applicants who had submitted the challenged employment application since June 23, 2004.
- Starbucks filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing the plaintiffs lacked standing.
- The trial court denied Starbucks's motion for summary judgment.
- Starbucks then filed a petition for a writ of mandate with the intermediate appellate court, asking it to overturn the trial court's denial of summary judgment.
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Issue:
Does a job applicant who has no prior marijuana convictions and was not confused by an allegedly illegal question on a job application have standing to sue for statutory damages under California Labor Code sections 432.7 and 432.8?
Opinions:
Majority - Ikola, J.
No. A plaintiff cannot recover statutory damages for an allegedly illegal question on a job application if they are not a member of the class the statute was designed to protect. The plaintiffs lack standing because the statutes in question (Labor Code §§ 432.7 and 432.8) were specifically enacted to protect individuals with prior minor marijuana convictions from social stigma and loss of employment opportunities. Because none of the plaintiffs had such convictions, they are not aggrieved persons who suffered the harm the Legislature intended to remedy. Furthermore, plaintiffs Lords and Yeung admitted they were not confused by the application's disclaimer, negating any claim that they were misled. To allow individuals with no relevant conviction history to recover a statutory penalty would lead to absurd results and create a windfall for unaffected plaintiffs, turning the statute into a 'veritable “adding machine”' rather than a tool for remediation.
Analysis:
This decision significantly narrows the scope of standing for plaintiffs bringing class-action lawsuits based on technical statutory violations in employment applications. The court rejects a strict liability approach where any applicant exposed to an illegal question can sue. Instead, it requires a plaintiff to demonstrate they are an 'aggrieved' party who belongs to the specific class the legislature sought to protect. This precedent makes it more difficult to bring 'shakedown' lawsuits over application form errors and forces courts to analyze the substantive legislative purpose behind such statutes, raising the bar for plaintiffs beyond merely identifying a technical violation.
