On February 6, 2012, the Court of Appeal (First Appellate District, Division One) handed down its opinion in Duran v. U.S. Bank National Association, ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (Feb. 6, 2012), in which it reversed the judgment and class certification in an employee misclassification case, declining to approve a "trial management plan lacking in any expert input or principled statistical foundation." Slip op. at 52. (Instead of following the recommendations of either party's experts, the trial court, for unknown reasons, decided that twenty names would be drawn from a hat, and the testimony of those twenty used to extrapolate findings for the whole class.)
On March 6, 2012, the Court of Appeal denied the petition for rehearing and modified the opinion by adding a footnote stating that the trial court must consider, on remand, the status of the damages awards to the named plaintiffs and other testifying class members. This makes sense, given that no extrapolation would be necessary to affirm the judgment in favor of those who testified below. The trial court held that all of them had been misclassified and should have been paid significant overtime wages. Duran v. U.S. Bank National Association, no. A125557.
On March 19, 2012, a review petition was filed. Duran v. U.S. Bank National Association, no. S200923.
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