Missing this in your records? Court says the burden now falls on employers
A California appellate court ruled Thursday that employers face an uphill battle defending meal break violations when their time records tell the wrong story.
The December 11 decision from the Third Appellate District Court of Appeal sends a clear message to HR departments: if your timekeeping system shows employees skipping meal breaks and you're not paying premiums, you've already lost half the fight.
The case involved Stephen Dieves, a truck driver who worked for Butte Sand Trucking Company for approximately nine months between January and October 2018. Dieves claimed the company talked a good game about meal breaks but created a workplace culture where taking them was essentially discouraged. When he was hired, according to his account, the safety director told him to sign an agreement for on-duty meal periods and that he'd have to do what every other driver did: "eat at 55 miles per hour."
His trainer reportedly reinforced the message, saying drivers didn't take meal breaks because that wasn't "the Butte Sand's way" unless they crossed state lines.
Dieves tried to get his claims certified as a class action. He backed up his allegations with company time records covering approximately 2 percent of shifts worked between May 2015 and November 2021. Those records, representing over 1,300 work shifts longer than five hours, showed something striking: not a single recorded meal break. An expert analyzed the data and projected that between 99.78 and 100 percent of qualifying shifts during the proposed class period would show the same pattern.
Butte Sand's office manager confirmed that no meal period premiums had been paid to drivers working those shifts.
The company fought back with 14 declarations from current and former drivers who said they'd never been pressured to skip breaks. These drivers said the company had policies allowing meal breaks, sent daily reminders through an in-truck communications system, and let them take breaks whenever they wanted. Most said they simply preferred working through lunch to finish earlier and get home.
The trial court sided with Butte Sand, denying class certification. The court said the time records alone didn't prove the company discouraged breaks. The records showed drivers weren't clocking out for meal breaks but provided no evidence of why. Maybe the nature of their work prevented them from being relieved of all duty. Maybe drivers took breaks but didn't record them. Maybe they voluntarily worked through breaks as a matter of personal preference.
That reasoning didn't fly with the appellate court.
The appeals panel said the trial court missed a critical legal step established in a 2021 California Supreme Court decision called Donohue. Under that framework, when time records show missed meal breaks and no premium payments, the law presumes the employer violated meal break rules. The presumption comes from an employer's duty to maintain accurate records of meal periods. At that point, the burden flips. The employer must prove that workers were actually offered compliant breaks but chose to skip them.
The trial court never applied that presumption or shifted the burden. That was reversible error, the appellate court said, sending the meal break claims back for reconsideration. The court couldn't say with certainty that the trial court would have reached the same result if it had properly considered whether Butte Sand met its burden of showing individualized issues based on 14 declarations when the presumed liability was established by over 1,300 records.
The court did uphold the trial court's decision on rest breaks, though. Unlike meal breaks, employers aren't required to keep records of rest periods. Without that recordkeeping requirement, there's no presumption to trigger. Dieves' personal observations that he never saw drivers take rest breaks weren't enough to prove a classwide pattern.
The appellate court also reversed the trial court's decision on expense reimbursement claims. Dieves had argued drivers were required to use personal cell phones for work but weren't reimbursed until January 2020, and even then only received $25 monthly, which he claimed was insufficient. The appellate court found the evidence didn't prove that personal phone use was necessary or that the reimbursement was inadequate.
The case also addressed whether the court could dismiss Dieves' claim under the Private Attorneys General Act, which lets workers sue on behalf of the state for labor code violations. The trial court had dismissed the PAGA claim as too difficult to manage at trial, noting it would involve 11,645 unique time records and potentially require individual testimony from 75 drivers about their daily schedules.
The appellate court reversed that decision too. A 2024 California Supreme Court ruling made clear that courts don't have authority to dismiss PAGA claims simply because they seem difficult to handle. The Legislature designed PAGA to maximize enforcement of labor laws, and letting courts dismiss cases as unmanageable would undermine that goal. However, the court sent the case back to the trial court to decide a separate question: whether federal motor carrier safety regulations preempt California's meal and rest break rules for commercial truck drivers.
In December 2018, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration decided that California may no longer enforce its meal and rest break laws for drivers of property-carrying commercial vehicles subject to federal hours of service rules. The appellate court agreed with a 2022 Ninth Circuit decision that this preemption applies regardless of when the underlying conduct occurred. California courts currently don't have the power to enforce meal and rest break claims covered by the federal decision. The trial court will need to determine whether Butte Sand's drivers fall within that category.
The decision shows how critical proper timekeeping becomes in defending meal break claims. Records showing missing breaks without documented premium payments create a presumption of violations that puts the burden on employers to explain why. Having a written policy allowing breaks isn't enough protection if the records suggest employees aren't actually taking them.
