Putting The 'Breaks' On Truck Driver Meal And Rest Break Class Actions

A federal court in California recently dismissed with prejudice a wage and hour putative class action brought by truck drivers, alleging claims based on violations of California's meal break laws, on the ground that those laws (as applied to a motor carrier's truck drivers) are preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA). See Esquivel et al. v. Vistar Corp. et al., Case No. 2:11-cv-07284 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 8, 2012). In making that ruling, the Esquivel court became the second court in recent months to hold that California's break laws are preempted by the FAAAA, which expressly preempts state laws that have a significant impact on the routes, service or prices of motor carriers.

Case Background

The plaintiffs in Esquivel were former truck drivers of various divisions of Performance Food Group, Inc. (PFG) in California. They alleged that PFG built its delivery routes to ensure timely delivery and customer service, but did so by imposing delivery windows and other policies that caused "time pressure" that prevented them and other drivers from being able to take meal breaks as specified under California law. PFG moved to dismiss their complaint. It successfully argued that no factual analysis of the merits of the claims was necessary to decide that they are preempted by the FAAAA. This is because California's break laws, as applied to a motor carrier's truck drivers, impose substantive standards regarding the timing, frequency and duration of breaks, and those requirements have a significant and prohibited impact on a motor carrier's operations. Thus, the court dismissed the putative wage and hour class action lawsuit with prejudice at the pleading stage.

In doing so, the Esquivel court relied on and applied the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's recent decision in American Trucking Ass'ns, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 660 F.3d 384, 397 (9th Cir. 2011) (ATA), and the subsequent decision of the district court in Dilts v. Penske Logistics, LLC, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 122421, *26 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 19, 2011). In ATA, the Ninth Circuit held that where a state law does not directly regulate a motor carrier's routes, service or prices, in order to determine whether FAAAA preemption applies, the "proper inquiry is whether the provision, directly or indirectly, 'binds the ... carrier to a particular price, route or service and thereby interferes with competitive market forces...