Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
The plaintiff, Michelle Snow, has worked at ConAgra’s Oakdale Plant since 1985, holding several positions including raw material receiver. She is a member of Teamsters Local 948 and her terms of employment are governed by a collective bargaining agreement. She has long suffered from PTSD, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and for several years requested a six-day workweek as an accommodation during the plant’s busy ‘Fresh Pack’ season — a period when most workers are scheduled seven days a week.
Beginning in 2020, the plaintiff filed a series of grievances with the Union and complaints with ConAgra. She received a number of corrective-action notices that were grieved and, in several instances, downgraded or removed. She testified at a 2021 arbitration involving the discipline of three coworkers for alleged sexual harassment, and she filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, which she ultimately withdrew. In 2021 she filed an administrative complaint with the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) and received a right-to-sue letter, then filed this federal lawsuit in April 2022.
The complaint asserted thirteen causes of action including six under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) — disability harassment and discrimination, failure to engage in the interactive process, failure to accommodate, failure to prevent harassment and discrimination, and retaliation — plus wage-and-hour claims, negligent hiring and supervision claims, and a derivative Unfair Competition Law (UCL) claim. ConAgra moved for summary judgment on every claim.
The Court’s Holding
The court granted summary judgment for ConAgra in its entirety. The decisive ruling concerned administrative exhaustion: under California regulations, a CRD right-to-sue complaint must include a description of the alleged acts of discrimination, the dates of the conduct, and the protected activity for any retaliation claim. The plaintiff’s 2021 CRD complaint relied entirely on check-box selections and conclusory phrases — she had not filled in the ‘Additional Complaint Details’ section and provided almost no factual narrative. The court held that this kind of bare-bones administrative complaint does not give the agency or the employer the notice required for exhaustion, and therefore cannot support any FEHA cause of action in court.
On the wage-and-hour claims (meal break, rest break, and itemized wage statement), the court found the plaintiff had already settled those claims as a member of two earlier class actions and had effectively abandoned them by failing to address them in opposition to the motion. On the negligent hiring and negligent supervision/retention claims, the court applied the two-year statute of limitations under California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 to time-bar most allegations and found that the post-cutoff evidence — primarily double-hearsay deposition testimony about a supervisor allegedly asking coworkers to help fire the plaintiff — was inadmissible and insufficient to create a triable fact question.
The UCL claim, which depended on the underlying statutory violations, fell with them. As the court put it, when statutory claims fail, derivative UCL claims fail too.
Key Takeaways
- A FEHA right-to-sue complaint that uses only check-boxes and conclusory phrases — without any factual narrative of the alleged conduct — does not satisfy California’s administrative exhaustion requirement.
- Plaintiffs and their counsel should treat the CRD intake form as a substantive pleading, including dates, names, and a clear description of each protected activity.
- Wage-and-hour claims that have been resolved through earlier class action settlements cannot be relitigated, and a plaintiff who fails to defend such claims at summary judgment is deemed to have abandoned them.
- Negligent hiring, supervision, and retention claims under California law are subject to a two-year statute of limitations, so much older alleged conduct is unavailable.
- Double-hearsay accounts of what a supervisor allegedly told other employees, without supporting declarations from those employees, are not enough to defeat summary judgment.
- Unfair Competition Law claims that depend entirely on alleged FEHA or wage-and-hour violations fall with the underlying claims.
Why It Matters
This decision is a strong reminder for California employees and their lawyers that the gateway to FEHA litigation in court — the CRD administrative complaint — is not a formality. Employers and the CRD itself must be told, with specifics, what is alleged so the agency can investigate. Filing a perfunctory check-box complaint to obtain a right-to-sue letter risks a complete loss of the case at summary judgment.
The opinion also illustrates how stacked deadlines and overlapping doctrines can quickly narrow a sprawling employment lawsuit. By the time the court applied the FEHA exhaustion rule, the wage-and-hour class settlement, and the two-year negligence statute of limitations, almost nothing was left of a complaint that originally spanned thirteen claims. For California employers, the case is a useful template for moving early to test the adequacy of an employee’s CRD filing and to bind the employee to prior class settlements.