Contract analysis

I. OPENING STATEMENT Target Time: 2 Minutes "Good morning, Your Honor. Renata Vasquez for Defendant Aurelius Media Americas Inc." Aurelius Media Americas — which I will refer to as "AMA" — respectfully opposes class certification as pled. However, AMA wishes to make clear at the outset that it approaches this hearing with a recognition that this case warrants nuanced analysis. We are not here to argue that the Court

II. PREDOMINANCE — THE CORE ISSUE Target Time: 8 Minutes A. The Auto-Deduction Is a Recording Method, Not a Substantive Policy Your Honor, the predominance analysis must begin with a clear understanding of what the auto-deduction actually is. AMA utilizes the NovaPay Solutions "TimeTrack Pro" timekeeping platform across all seven of its California production facilities. The TimeTrack Pro system includes an auto-deduc

III. THE ATTESTATION FEATURE — THE FACILITY SPLIT Target Time: 4 Minutes A. Concession on the Three Facilities Without the Feature Your Honor, AMA approaches this hearing with an obligation of candor, and there is a feature of this case that presents a closer question on commonality. We want to address it directly. The Missed Meal Attestation feature was not activated at three of AMA's seven California production fac

1. Facility limitation. The subclass includes only employees at the three facilities where the Missed Meal Attestation feature was not activated. Employees at Facilities 1, 3, 5, and 6 — where the attestation feature was active throughout the class period — had a mechanism to report missed breaks in real time. Their claims are fundamentally distinguishable, and their inclusion in a certified class would undermine pre

2. Claim limitation. The subclass addresses only the first meal period auto-deduction claim. It does not include the second meal period claim, rest period claims, off-the-clock/overtime claims, minimum wage claims, wage statement claims, waiting time penalty claims, or the UCL claim. Each of those claims presents distinct individualized issues that are not amenable to class-wide resolution, as I will discuss in a mom

3. Temporal limitation. The subclass period ends on December 31, 2022, reflecting the completion of AMA's corrective activation of the attestation feature at all three facilities. This narrow subclass definition targets the strongest common question in the case — the combination of an auto-deduction and the absence of any electronic attestation mechanism — while excluding the many claims and class members for whom in

IV. REST PERIOD AND OFF-THE-CLOCK CLAIMS Target Time: 3 Minutes A. Rest Period Claims — No Systemic Evidence Plaintiffs' motion seeks certification of rest period claims under Labor Code section 226.7 on behalf of the entire putative class. This claim fails for a simple reason: there is no common proof of a systematic failure to provide rest periods across AMA's operations. Rest periods are not tracked in the TimeTra

V. TYPICALITY AND ADEQUACY Target Time: 2 Minutes A. Named Plaintiffs Are Not Typical of the Class The typicality requirement of Code of Civil Procedure section 382 demands that the named plaintiffs' claims be "reasonably co-extensive with those of absent class members." The three named plaintiffs in this action fail that standard because their individual experiences are not representative of each other, let alone of

VI. SUPERIORITY Target Time: 1 Minute — Brief Given the individualized nature of the meal period, rest period, and off-the-clock claims, a class action is not a superior method of adjudication. A certified class action encompassing all seven causes of action on behalf of 1,850 putative class members will inevitably devolve into hundreds of individualized mini-trials on liability. The Court would be required to conduc

VII. CLOSING Target Time: 1 Minute Your Honor, for all of the foregoing reasons, Aurelius Media Americas Inc. respectfully requests that the Court deny class certification in its entirety. The predominance requirement is not met for any of the seven causes of action. The typicality requirement is not met because the named plaintiffs' individual experiences diverge from each other and from the putative class. The adeq

VIII. ANTICIPATED QUESTIONS FROM THE COURT AND PROPOSED ANSWERS Question 1: "Why shouldn't the auto-deduction itself be treated as a common policy?" Proposed Answer: "Your Honor, because the auto-deduction is a recording method, not a substantive policy. It is a method for recording time — not a method for denying meal periods. The substantive question under Brinker is whether AMA provided compliant meal breaks — tha

IX. LOGISTICS AND PROCEDURAL NOTES Attending for AMA: Exhibits: The Compendium of Exhibits to Opposition (Document 87) will be tabbed and available for the Court's reference. Key exhibits are flagged as follows: Time Allocation: We anticipate that the Court will provide 20 to 25 minutes for AMA's argument, consistent with the Court's typical practice for extended time in certification hearings. Plaintiffs, as the mov