Colin Cochran brought a putative class action against his employers, Schwan’s Home Service, on behalf of 1,500 customer service managers who were not reimbursed for expenses pertaining to the work-related use of their personal cell phones. He alleged causes of action for violation of Labor Code section 2802; unfair business practices under Business and Professions Code section 17200 et seq.; declaratory relief; and statutory penalties under Labor Code section 2699, the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004.
The trial court denied class certification on the grounds that there would be too many individualized questions about each employee’s cell phone expenses incurred for work purpose. In Cochran v. Schwan’s Home Service, the appellate court reversed trial court’s denial of class certification. Below are five lessons employers should learn from this ruling.
1. Employers have an obligation to reimburse business expenses incurred by employees.
Labor Code section 2802, subdivision (a) requires: "[a]n employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer…." This Labor Code section requires employers to reimburse employees for all out-of-pocket expenses the employee incurs (and not just cell phone usage) during the performance of their job.
2. Expenses must be necessary in order to require employer reimbursement.
"In calculating the reimbursement amount due under section 2802, the employer may consider not only the actual expenses that the employee incurred, but also whether each of those expenses was `necessary,’ which in turn depends on the reasonableness of the employee’s choices. [Citation.]"
Cochran at 1144. What is necessary or not could vary from case to case. Apparently, in this case, the employer had a clear policy requiring the service representatives to use their personal cell phones, so there was no need for the court to conduct any analysis about whether the putative class members’ use of their personal cell phones was a necessary expense.
3. Employers must always reimburse employee for expense of cell phone use even though the employee did not pay additional cell phone fees for using their cell phone for work purposes.
This is the essential holding of the Cochran case. The court explains:
The threshold question in this case is this: Does an employer always have to reimburse an employee for the reasonable expense of the mandatory use of a personal cell phone, or is the reimbursement obligation limited to the situation in which the employee incurred an extra expense that he or she would not have otherwise incurred absent the job? The answer is that reimbursement is always required.
Cochran at 1144. The employer argued that the case could not be certified as a class action because there are too many individualized questions surrounding each employee’s cell phone plan, and if the employee actually incurred any more expenses as a result of using their cell phone for work. Many people now have unlimited data plans, and if so, the employee would not incurred any additional expenses when using the phone for work.
The court explained that any time a cell phone is required for work, the employer must reimburse the employee. The court stated that to hold otherwise would provide a “windfall” to the employer.
4. The court held that the details about each employee’s cell phone plan do not determine liability.
Not only does our interpretation prevent employers from passing on operating expenses, it also prevents them from digging into the private lives of their employees to unearth how they handle their finances vis-a-vis family, friends and creditors. To show liability under section 2802, an employee need only show that he or she was required to use a personal cell phone to make work-related calls, and he or she was not reimbursed.
Cochran at 1145.
5. The court did not explain how to calculate a reasonable reimbursement for employee’s cell phone use when the employee has an unlimited data plan.
The court passed in explaining how an employer and employee would go about figuring out the amount of reimbursement for personal cell phone use given the different data plans available for cell phones. The court stated that section 2802 requires that the employer should pay some “reasonable percentage” of the employees’ cell phone plans when the cell phone is required for work. Cochran at 1144.
This ambiguity is a blessing and a curse for employers. It is a blessing in that it leaves many options available to employers and employees to structure a reasonable reimbursement plan, but it is a curse because the ambiguity could still lead to future challenges to the agreed upon reimbursement plan.