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Court of Appeal:
Denial of Class Certification Not Appealable for PAGA Party
Opinion Says Plaintiff Cannot ‘Ring Death Knell’ by Voluntarily Dismissing All Remaining Representative Claims After Court Denies Class Approval
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal has held that a plaintiff who filed causes of action against a former employer for alleged wage and hour violations may not render an order denying class certification immediately appealable under the “death knell” doctrine by later voluntarily dismissing, without prejudice, all representative claims.
A denial of class certification is not ordinarily appealable until after final judgment, as it leaves undisturbed the plaintiff’s individual claims, but the “death knell” doctrine provides a narrow exception. Under the theory, if the order effectively terminates the entire action as to the class members, courts treat the matter as fully resolved.
The principle is motivated by two basic considerations—the order terminating class claims is the practical equivalent of a final judgment for the purported class, and the plaintiff may lack incentive to pursue individual causes of action once the possibility of group recovery is absent.
California permits an appeal in this situation because the order would essentially “ring the death knell” for the class claims and render further proceedings in the action impractical and unlikely.
In an opinion, filed Tuesday and authored by Justice Martin N. Buchanan, the court declared:
“We are…confronted with a novel jurisdictional question: Can a putative class action plaintiff unilaterally ring the death knell for the entire class and retroactively create appellate jurisdiction by voluntarily dismissing all remaining representative claims long after class certification has been denied?
“We conclude that the answer is no. [The plaintiff] is attempting to appeal a nonappealable order, as his PAGA claims remained viable and pending at the time he filed his notice of appeal. His voluntary dismissal of the remaining PAGA claims over a year later was not itself appealable and did not retroactively make the class certification order appealable. We therefore conclude the death knell doctrine does not apply here, and we do not have jurisdiction to entertain [the] appeal from the order denying class certification.”
Acting Presiding Justice Joan K. Irion and Justice Julia C. Kelety joined in the opinion.
Putative Class Action
The question arose after plaintiff Angel D. Chavez Reyes (referred to in the opinion as “Chavez”) filed a putative class action complaint against his former employers, Hi-Grade Materials Co. and Robar Enterprises Inc., in 2019. In the operative complaint, he asserts 12 causes of action for alleged wage and hour violations, including four claims seeking penalties under the Private Attorney General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”).
Chavez moved for class certification, which San Bernardino Superior Court Judge David S. Cohn denied in August 2023. The following month, Chavez filed a notice of appeal, saying that the order was “immediately appealable under the Death Knell Doctrine.”
Hi-Grade and Robar objected in an appellate brief, filed in August 2024, saying the denial was not appealable because the PAGA claims remained viable. In November, Chavez voluntarily dismissed those claims without prejudice in the trial court.
Buchanan noted that “[i]t is well established that the death knell doctrine does not apply when representative PAGA claims remain pending after the trial court has denied class certification” because “the possibility of group recovery under PAGA still exists despite the termination of the class claims.”
However, he said that Chavez’s appeal presents a “wrinkle” in the analysis, remarking that the PAGA claims of some of the purported class members were barred by the statute’s one-year time bar.
Under those circumstances, he said:
“For this subset of the class, the order denying class certification was effectively the death knell for any potential relief.”
Significant Overlap
Addressing the “wrinkle,” Buchanan wrote:
“[W]e still conclude that the order was not immediately appealable upon entry. There was a significant overlap between the putative class and the group of aggrieved employees who would have been entitled to share in the PAGA penalties. These were not separate and distinct groups. After the class certification ruling, a significant portion of the putative class still could have obtained relief on the pending PAGA claims. In these circumstances, the death knell doctrine did not apply while the PAGA claims remained pending.”
Turning to whether Chavez’s voluntary dismissal of the PAGA claims operates to revive appealability, the jurist pointed out that the action was taken without prejudice and said:
“We cannot see how a nonappealable event occurring over a year after a nonappealable order can retroactively create appellate jurisdiction where none existed before.”
He added:
“We emphasize that Chavez may still seek appellate review of the class certification order after entry of a final judgment on all remaining claims. Although the death knell doctrine ordinarily allows an immediate appeal when only individual claims remain as a result of an order denying class certification, here the reason only individual claims remain is not because of the trial court’s order but because of Chavez’s voluntary decision to dismiss the surviving PAGA representative claims long after he filed this appeal. It is not our proper function to exercise appellate jurisdiction over an interlocutory order just to extricate a litigant from circumstances of his own creation.”
The case is Reyes v. Hi-Grade Materials Co., 2025 S.O.S. 1168.
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