AMANZA SMITH v. THE SUPERIOR COURT OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Filed 7/10/06

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA

AMANZA SMITH, )

)

Petitioner, )

) S129476

v. )

) Ct.App. 2/5 B176918

THE SUPERIOR COURT OF )

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, )

) Los Angeles County

Respondent; ) Super. Ct. No. BC 284690

)

L'OREAL USA, INC., )

)

Real Party in Interest. )

___________ )

Story continue from Part I ………

Through its biennial reports, BLS consistently emphasized the success of, and continued need for, wage payment legislation to protect working men and women from exploitative employers and to alleviate the predicament of discharged employees and quitting employees who were unable to promptly obtain the wages they earned. (E.g., BLS, 16th Biennial Rep.: 1913-1914 (1914) p. 15; BLS, 15th Biennial Rep.: 1911-1912 (1912) p. 9.) In reviewing the particular reports both sides have identified as relevant, however, we find no instance in which BLS purported to distinguish between employees who were fired or otherwise dismissed from ongoing employment and those who were released after completing their agreed-upon job assignments or terms of service. Certainly nothing in these reports indicated a recognition that the consequences of delayed or withheld wages were dissimilar for these different categories of employees. Nor was there any suggestion that fired employees were more economically or socially vulnerable as a result of deferred wage payment, or otherwise more deserving of immediate wage payment, than those employees who were not fired but released when their work was deemed completed. To the contrary, the passage BLS found significant within Moore, supra, 37 Cal.App. at page 380, reflects there was no perception of such a distinction. Accordingly, it is not surprising, in light of the important public policy at stake, that the Legislature, rather than adopting a narrower construction of the statutory term â€