After 19 Years of Litigation(!) And a $43 Million Award, Judgment in Escrow Officer Wage Case Is Largely Reversed

Cortina v. North Am. Title Co. , 2026 WL 1506576 (Cal. Ct. App. 2026) In this 137-page opinion, which the Court of Appeal noted involves an even more “rare and beastly case” than Duran v. U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n , 59 Cal. 4 th 1 (2014), the Court held that the trial court committed multiple prejudicial errors, including permitting a trial plan and format that contravened the holdings of Duran ; rejecting the employer’s affirmative defenses “out of hand” on a class wide basis; eliciting “representative testimony” from just 15 percent of the cohort of allegedly misclassified employees; failing to decertify the “exempt” class of employees based upon an unworkable trial plan; and appointing a referee to conduct a second phase of trial without the parties’ consent and over “defendant’s strenuous objections,” leading to a $43 million judgment. See also Taduran v. James R. Glidewell, Dental Ceramics, Inc. , 2026 WL 1894062 (Cal. Ct. App. 2026) (trial court properly reduced PAGA penalties on a per-employee rather than a per-pay period basis and properly reduced the prevailing-party attorney’s fees amount while applying a negative modifier (0.7) to the lodestar amount).