Business and labor leaders announced an agreement with Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday to rewrite a unique California law — the Private Attorneys General Act, or PAGA — that allows workers to join one another and sue employers for violating state labor laws. The agreement would increase payments to workers, reduce penalties on businesses that promptly change illegal practices, and remove from the November ballot a business-sponsored initiative to repeal PAGA.

An insured, in a continuous injury context, may seek coverage from first-level excess insurance policies upon the exhaustion of any underlying primary coverage obtained for the same period—referred to as “vertical exhaustion”—if the language in the agreement so provides, the California Supreme Court held yesterday.

Legal rights to use water — particularly those obtained prior to 1914 — lie at the heart of California’s perpetual wrangling over the allocation of increasingly limited water supplies. For years state officials have been trying, with limited success, to reduce farmers’ diversions, increase river flows and restore declining numbers of fish, particularly salmon, and other wildlife.

(Subscription required) The companies' failure to force plaintiff's nonindividual claims under PAGA into arbitration will reinforce the pressure on negotiations between business interests and the California Labor Federation, along with Gov. Gavin Newsom, to reach a compromise agreement on changes to the law.