$43.5 Million Judgment for 700 Escrow Officers Misclassified as Overtime-Exempt

North American Title Company employed hundreds of escrow officers across California during the real estate boom of the mid-2000s. According to the lawsuit filed in 2007, the company classified those workers as exempt from overtime and, employees alleged, pressured them not to record the extra hours they worked. The class that ultimately went to trial numbered approximately 700 escrow officers.

Wagner Jones Kopfman & Artenian, a Fresno employment firm, took the lead representing the class. Attorneys Andrew Jones and Lawrence Artenian handled the case through a bench trial before Fresno County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Y. Hamilton, Jr., which began in September 2015. Because the parties chose a judge-only format rather than a jury, the proceedings moved more efficiently through the complicated individual-damages questions the case raised.

The core legal question was whether North American Title had properly classified its escrow officers as exempt from California overtime requirements. The firm argued the classification was improper across the board. After the liability phase concluded in 2016, the court spent several years assessing individual damages for each class member before entering a final judgment of approximately $43.5 million in 2022.

The California Supreme Court weighed in on a separate procedural dispute in October 2024, addressing whether the plaintiffs had timely raised a judicial-disqualification claim. The court reversed the Court of Appeal on that procedural question, ruling that timeliness rules apply even to bias-based disqualification attempts.

The underlying judgment did not survive appeal. In 2026, the California Court of Appeal largely reversed the $43.5 million award. In a 137-page opinion, the court described the litigation as a 'rare and beastly case' and identified multiple trial-court errors, including a trial plan that conflicted with class-action precedent, insufficient testimony from class members, and the appointment of a referee without defendant's consent. The case had been in litigation for 19 years at the time of the appellate reversal.