Management-side employment lawyers were not happy when the Second District Court of Appeal, under orders from the California Supreme Court to reconsider an important wage-and-hour issue, issued a new opinion last July with practically the identical holding.
The California Employment Law Council was so unhappy, it not only asked the Supreme Court to depublish the ruling, it even suggested the Supreme Court send the case back to a different appellate division for another round of reconsideration.
Well, the Supreme Court didn't take that unprecedented step, but last month it did depublish Harris v. Superior Court. That probably won't make real party Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. happy, but it was welcomed by CELC, a group of in-house counsel and HR officials around the state represented by Paul Hastings.
"We felt that the decision of the court of appeal in Harris III was inconsistent in many respects with the analysis of the Supreme Court in Harris II, and that conflict would have led to confusion in the lower courts," said Paul Hastings partner Paul Grossman, general counsel to the CELC. "And therefore we are delighted at the depublication order which leaves the law clear now in California on the basis of the Supreme Court's decision."
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