Employment Litigation · Primary-source case analysis
Troester: Regular Off-the-Clock Minutes Are Not De Minimis Under California Wage Law
Decision: Troester v. Starbucks Corp., No. S234969 (Cal. July 26, 2018).
On July 26, 2018, the California Supreme Court answered a question certified by the Ninth Circuit in Troester: Recurring minutes of compensable closing work could not be left unpaid merely because the employer considered the time difficult to record. De minimis means too small to matter; the court rejected that defense on these facts.
Closing work after clocking out
A Starbucks shift supervisor had to clock out before running the store-closing program, activating the alarm, exiting, locking the door, and sometimes handling additional closing tasks. The assumed uncompensated time was four to ten minutes per closing shift and totaled nearly thirteen hours over seventeen months.
California had not adopted the federal rule
The Ninth Circuit asked whether the federal FLSA de minimis doctrine applied to California wage claims. The CA Supreme Court found no indication that the state statutes or wage orders incorporated the federal doctrine and emphasized California’s requirement to compensate employees for all hours worked.
The facts were not an uncertain trifle
The work was regularly required, occurred daily, and could amount to several minutes. The Court held that the wage order and statutes did not permit treating that time as noncompensable on the stated facts, even if the employer argued that recording it was difficult.
The question left open
The Court did not decide whether some compensable time could be so fleeting or irregular that recording it would be unreasonable. Its answer was limited to the recurring post-shift work described in the certified question.
Key takeaways
- Regularly required work lasting several minutes must be recorded and paid.
- California wage law did not adopt the federal de minimis doctrine on these facts.
- Administrative difficulty alone does not erase compensation duties.
- The court left genuinely fleeting or irregular activities for another case; it did not set a universal seconds-or-minutes cutoff.
Review off-the-clock wage and hour claims
Mishra X Trial Lawyers can assess uncompensated post-shift or pre-shift work under California wage law. Bring timecard records, pay stubs, written closing procedures, and logs of unrecorded work hours. Call (949) 343-9735 or email office@mishrax.com.