California Supreme Court won’t take up Vail Resorts labor lawsuit
The decision sends case back to the California Superior Court

Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
Vail Resorts’ effort to have its labor lawsuit reviewed by the California Supreme Court has failed, appellants learned last week.
While no opinion or notice was sent out by the high court, the court docket was updated on Jan. 29 to say that the review was denied and a remittitur had been issued, sending the case back to the California Superior Court.
The decision Vail Resorts sought to have reviewed was issued in October by California’s 3rd Appellate District, which overturned a settlement that, for years, appellants had argued was unfair.
The settlement involved Vail Resorts employees who had accused the company of numerous Fair Labor Standards Act violations, including unpaid hours and overtime, necessary equipment and expenses not being reimbursed, and other violations. Appellants said the $13.1 million settlement was “pennies on the dollar” as it could have been split up between a class of more than 100,000 workers after the plantiffs’ attorneys subtracted approximately $4 million in payment from the total.
While Vail Resorts attorneys said the risk in taking the case to trial made it a fair settlement, the appellants argued that it was a “reverse auction,” in which “a defendant in a series of class actions picks the most ineffectual lawyers to negotiate a settlement in the hope that the district court will approve a weak settlement that will preclude other claims against the defendant.”

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As that settlement was being negotiated in California in 2021 and 2022, a similar case involving other Vail Resorts employees who had opted out of the California case was being heard in federal court in Colorado. California’s 3rd Appellate District, in addition to overturning the settlement, also ruled that a judge should have allowed the Colorado plaintiffs to intervene in the California state court case.
Now, with the Colorado plaintiffs set to intervene, the case will go back to the trial court in California. A motion to dismiss the case, filed by the Colorado plaintiffs, could be heard next, as the Colorado plaintiffs feel that California state court is not an appropriate venue for a case that involves employees in 16 states and alleges violations of federal laws.
Vail Resorts’ attorneys said they pursued the case in state court because the federal court system in California was too backed up at the time.
“The level of backlog in that docket would have made it far less efficient to proceed with that path,” attorney Michael Bell, representing Vail Resorts, said at a hearing in 2023.
The Colorado federal court case is now on hold in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. As Vail Resorts is based in nearby Broomfield, the plaintiffs argue that they have “general jurisdiction” in the case, something that was brought up in California’s 3rd Appellate District’s overturning of the settlement.
“We cannot say that defendants are essentially at home in California, as required for general jurisdiction,” the 3rd Appellate District said in its opinion, issued in October. “Nor can we say on this record that the out-of-state claims had a sufficient link to California to warrant specific jurisdiction. So absent defendants’ consent to suit, California courts would appear to lack personal jurisdiction over these claims.”