Got a PAGA notice or lawsuit? What to do first.

A PAGA notice is a letter filed with the Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) and sent to your company, alleging wage-and-hour violations across your workforce. Decisions about cure proposals, the early evaluation conference and mediation belong with experienced California employment defense counsel. Engage them in the first days, not after the 65-day LWDA window runs.

Scaled Comp works alongside your counsel as the data partner: we quantify the records and the market so the legal strategy rests on numbers, not guesses.

For notices filed on or after June 19, 2024, the reformed PAGA sets these clocks. Confirm each date with counsel.

Reasonable steps taken before the notice (or any records request) can cap penalties at 15%. The caps do not apply to the $200 penalty. See the PAGA Compliance Guide for the full reform rules.

Put a hold on time punches, payroll registers, wage statements, meal and rest period policies and any rounding or auto-deduct settings for the full lookback period. These are the records the plaintiff will request, and the records your defense depends on.

PAGA penalties are counted per aggrieved employee, per pay period. The default is $100 each. That means your exposure number already exists in your timekeeping data: every late meal, missed rest period and wage statement error can be counted shift by shift.

Get that number before the plaintiff's demand frames the case. A Scaled Comp Analyzer run rebuilds every shift from your punch data, applies California's meal, rest and wage statement rules, and reports violations and penalty exposure by location and pay period.

A handful of firms file a large share of PAGA claims. In the first half of 2026, the five most active plaintiffs' firms accounted for roughly 40% of all settlements. How the firm on your notice has settled before, how long its cases run and which mediators it uses tells your counsel what to expect. A Plaintiff Firm Profile answers those questions from court and LWDA records.

How much does a PAGA lawsuit cost an employer? The gross settlement on a docket says little on its own. Compare settlements per pay period or per workweek, filtered by claim mix, industry, workforce size and whether the notice predates the 2024 reform.

What Scaled Comp's settlement data shows for the first half of 2026

Source: Scaled Comp settlement data from public court records and LWDA filings, January–June 2026.

Read the mid-year 2026 PAGA settlement data, or see how our Vector Index™ benchmarks comparable matters.

Most employment practices liability (EPLI) policies either exclude wage-and-hour claims or cover them only narrowly. For most California employers, meaningful wage-and-hour insurance doesn't exist in practice: specialty policies are either unavailable or carry retentions so high they work as self-insurance. Read your policy with your broker now, and plan as if the exposure is yours. More in Where EPLI Stops.

Correct the practices behind the alleged violations: policies, scheduling, timekeeping settings and manager training. Document each step. That record supports the 30% cap and makes the next notice less likely. A Monthly Compliance Run shows whether the fixes are holding.