Last year, Assembly Bill 692 limited the use of “stay or pay” contracts by California employers.  These contracts typically pay a signing bonus or an amount for education or training and require the employee to work for a specific period of time over which the bonus or training payment is earned and require the employee to return some or all or some of the bonus or training amount if the employee fails to complete that period of employment.  Unfortunately, AB 692 disproportionately impacted healthcare, trucking and retail, industries that rely heavily on these types of arrangements.  ...

An employer that moves to compel arbitration on the wrong agreement may not get a second chance to move on the right one. In Hickenbottom v. Medical Solutions LLC, the Fourth District Court of Appeal held that a successive motion to compel arbitration is a renewed motion under Code of Civil Procedure section 1008(b), even when it relies on a different arbitration agreement, and must satisfy that section’s affidavit and diligence requirements. The employer in Hickenbottom failed to include an affidavit in its second motion to compel, and so the trial court had no jurisdiction to ...

Q:      In previous columns you have stated that state court receivers in California have quasi-judicial immunity. However, the cases cited were either unreported cases or cases where the party being sued was not a receiver, but a different functionary. Are there any reported California cases that explicitly hold that a state court receiver has quasi-judicial immunity?

A:      You are correct that California cases, up to now, that said state court receivers have quasi-judicial immunity were either unreported [Haider v. Speiser, 2012 WL 4101944 (2012), where the defendant was actually a ...

An employee who files an arbitration demand on claims unrelated to sexual harassment is not necessarily barred from later proceeding in court under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA). In Ding v. Structure Therapeutics, Inc., the Ninth Circuit held that an employee who discovers a plausible sex-based harassment claim during arbitration may invoke the EFAA and proceed in court.

Dr. Ding, the company’s former Chief Financial Officer, filed a demand for arbitration with JAMS alleging discrimination, retaliation, and ...

For the better part of a decade, employers have been required to continually revise their arbitration agreements to reduce the risk of unconscionability challenges that were the focus of numerous appellate court decisions. Throughout this process the clause defining the claims to which the arbitration agreement applied was often ignored, carrying over unchanged from one version to the next. The Fourth District’s decision in Morales v. Superior Court is a reminder that a carefully drafted arbitration agreement is of little use if it does not cover the claims the employee ...

In the years since the enactment of the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA), California courts have treated a single sufficiently pleaded harassment claim as rendering an entire case not subject to arbitration, even if other causes of action would have been covered by the employer’s arbitration agreement. Mitchell v. Lilac Solutions, Inc. holds that waiting to build a record against the harassment claim before moving to compel can be deemed a waiver of the right to arbitration by the employer.

In Mitchell, four former Lilac ...

Due to recent increases in fuel prices, the IRS announced a rare midyear increase to the 2026 mileage rates that may be used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical, or moving purposes.  Specifically, as of July 1, 2026, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) are:

• 76 cents per mile driven for business use, up three and one-half cents from the rate for the first half of 2026;
• 23.5 cents per mile driven for medical, or moving purposes for active-duty members of the Armed Forces, up three cents ...

Buyers negotiate hard for a MAC condition. Courts almost never let them use it.

Every acquisition agreement allocates one uncomfortable question: Who bears the risk that the target's business deteriorates between signing and closing? The material adverse change (MAC) clause is the primary tool for answering it. It sits quietly in the closing conditions section until a deal goes sideways, and then it becomes the most litigated few words in the agreement.

The MAC clause is frequently the last provision to receive serious drafting attention and the first provision everyone wishes ...

An arbitration agreement can appear mutual on its face and still be interpreted as favoring the employer. That has become a recurring ground for courts to deny employer motions to compel arbitration, and Cluck v. GEO Secure Services, LLC is the latest example. In Cluck, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal held that the arbitration agreement had to be construed together with a confidentiality agreement the employee signed the same day. The two documents read together were held to be substantively unconscionable because they sent the employee’s likely claims to ...

On August 3, 2026, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to pass S. 3977, the Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment Act of 2026. The bill has had bipartisan support since it was introduced in March 2026. The bill would permanently restore the Subchapter V debt ceiling to $7.5 million for qualifying small businesses and individuals filing for reorganization under Chapter 11.

A Quick Refresher on Subchapter V

Congress created Subchapter V in February 2020 through the Small Business Reorganization Act (“Act”), giving smaller companies a leaner, less expensive path through Chapter 11 than ...