A California employer can’t get a PAGA case thrown out just because it would be hard to try. In Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc., the Supreme Court of California held “that trial courts lack inherent authority to strike PAGA claims on manageability grounds.” The 2024 PAGA reform then gave courts a written power to narrow these cases instead. For the defense, the fight has moved from dismissal to the shape of the trial: which evidence comes in, and how much of the claim survives.
What the Supreme Court decided
The Court decided Estrada on January 18, 2024 (No. S274340). Chief Justice Guerrero wrote for a unanimous Court, and the decision affirmed the Fourth District, Division Three.
The case involved meal period claims by workers at a carpet manufacturer. The trial court decertified some of the class claims and then struck the PAGA claim for the same group, reasoning that individual questions about why employees missed breaks made a representative trial unmanageable. The Court of Appeal reversed that ruling, and other appellate courts had gone the other way.
The Supreme Court sided with the Court of Appeal. Its opinion explained that “trial courts do not generally possess a broad inherent authority to dismiss claims,” and that it is not “appropriate for trial courts to strike PAGA claims by employing class action manageability requirements.” The Court put it directly: dismissal for manageability “is not among the tools trial courts possess,” and that’s true “even if those claims are complex or time-intensive.”
Why class action rules didn’t carry over
Employers had argued that PAGA claims should face the same manageability test as class actions. The Court rejected that.
A class action needs certification, and manageability is part of deciding whether a class trial is superior to individual suits. A PAGA claim has no certification step. The Court wrote that “class claims differ significantly from PAGA claims in ways that make it inappropriate to impose a class action-based manageability requirement on PAGA actions.” It added that “a PAGA claim is a pure statutory claim arising under California law,” and the statute contained no manageability requirement.
That reasoning matters for case strategy. A decertification win on the class claims no longer takes the PAGA claim down with it. Many employers learned that the hard way in 2024, when PAGA claims they expected to fall with the class kept going.
What the Court left open for the defense
Estrada wasn’t a total loss for employers. The opinion spent several paragraphs on what trial courts can still do, and those passages are the defense playbook.
The Court said its holding “does not preclude trial courts from limiting the types of evidence a plaintiff may present or using other tools to assure that a PAGA claim can be effectively tried.” It also put the burden of a manageable trial on the plaintiff: “it behooves the PAGA plaintiff to ensure that trial of the action is manageable so the maximum number of potential violations may be established.” And it quoted the Court of Appeal’s warning that if a plaintiff alleges widespread violations “but cannot prove them in an efficient manner, it does not seem unreasonable for the punishment assessed to be minimal.”
Ordinary motions also survive. The opinion confirmed that a trial court “may issue substantive rulings, including those on demurrer, or on motions for summary judgment or judgment notwithstanding the verdict.” A PAGA claim built on a theory that fails as a matter of law can still be defeated the usual way.
What changed with the 2024 PAGA reform
Five months after Estrada, the Legislature put the trial court’s narrowing power into the statute. Labor Code section 2699, subdivision (p) now provides: “The superior court may limit the evidence to be presented at trial or otherwise limit the scope of any claim filed pursuant to this part to ensure that the claim can be effectively tried.”
Subdivision (p) doesn’t mention dismissal. What it does is give defense counsel a statutory hook for a trial plan motion, instead of relying only on the passages in Estrada. The phrase “limit the scope of any claim” is broader than limiting evidence, and employers can argue for narrowing the employee groups, locations, or time periods that go to trial when the plaintiff can’t prove them efficiently.
Timing matters here. Under subdivision (v), the 2024 amendments “shall apply to a civil action brought on or after June 19, 2024,” but not to an action whose PAGA notice “was filed before June 19, 2024.” For an older case, the narrowing power comes from Estrada itself. For a newer one, the employer can cite both.
What doesn’t change
Estrada’s core holding stands. Later Courts of Appeal have cited it for PAGA’s enforcement purpose, and nothing in the 2024 reform restores a power to strike for unmanageability. An employer that moves to strike a PAGA claim only because it is big will lose that motion.
The penalty phase is also unchanged. Even after a narrowed trial, the court still decides the amount, and it can reduce penalties under section 2699, subdivision (e)(2). The firm’s post on PAGA penalty reductions after Taduran v. Glidewell covers how that discretion works at judgment. A manageability argument and a penalty argument often rest on the same facts: the plaintiff can’t show what happened to employees it never surveyed.
Steps to take once a PAGA lawsuit reaches trial planning
- Keep the litigation hold in place on timekeeping and payroll data and on every version of the challenged policies, broken out by location and job title.
- Calendar the case management and trial setting dates, and confirm whether the PAGA notice was filed before or after June 19, 2024, along with any arbitration agreement or EPLI notice requirement that affects the defense.
- Identify the managers and payroll staff who can explain how practices differed across sites, and make sure no current employee in the case faces action that could look like retaliation.
- Pull the documents that show variation: different policies by location, different supervisors’ practices, employee waivers, and the data that tests whether the plaintiff’s sample represents anyone else.
- Talk to a lawyer before agreeing to a trial plan, stipulating to representative evidence, or proposing a sampling method. A stipulation made early is hard to undo at trial.
Under Estrada, the strongest manageability argument is a motion to limit evidence and scope supported by the employer’s own data. Experienced California employment defense attorneys build that record during discovery, because the trial plan motion is only as strong as the proof that practices varied.
If your company faces a PAGA trial
If your company is defending a PAGA lawsuit that covers several locations or job categories, the variation in your own records usually decides how much of the case reaches a jury. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents employers defending employment lawsuits and claims through its business litigation practice, including claims involving PAGA civil penalties and representative trials. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.
Sources
The decision is Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc. (2024) 15 Cal.5th 582. The statute is Labor Code section 2699, subdivisions (e)(2), (p), and (v).
This post is general information about California and federal employment law as of November 7, 2026. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Employment statutes, regulations, and court decisions change often, and the outcome of any claim depends on its facts. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.