Employers and Employees Alike Continue to Wait for Brinker Ruling
The alleged failure to provide legally mandated meal breaks has been one of the most common claims raised against California employers in the recent past. The lack of agreement as to what it means to "provide" a meal break has allowed the number of these cases to explode. As any employer who has faced a meal break claim knows, the California Supreme Court granted review of a case entitled Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court (Hohnbaum). (The Court also granted review of Brinkley v. Public Storage, another case raising similar meal break issues.) The Supreme Court's decision in the Brinker case is expected to provide some much needed clarity with respect to the obligation of employers to "provide" meal breaks, including whether the employer must ensure that the meal breaks are taken, or whether the employer simply needs to make those breaks available for employees, to be taken or skipped at the employee's discretion.
The Supreme Court granted review of Brinker in October 2008. The case has been fully briefed by the parties, and the deadline for filing amicus briefs has passed. (There were more than 20 such briefs filed.) The ball now is in the Supreme Court's hands. The next step is for the Court to schedule a date for oral argument. There is no deadline by which the Court needs to schedule this argument, so we do not know how quickly it will take place. So far the Court has given no indication of when the argument will occur, although many expect it to occur in the first half of 2010. Once the Court conducts the oral argument, it has 90 days in which to issue its decision.
The Court issues its monthly oral argument calendar on the 10th of each month for the following month. The Brinker case is not listed on the Court's March calendar, so oral argument will not take place until April at the earliest. We will keep you posted on the status.