Lab. Code, § 218.5 · Article 1. General Occupations
Lab. Code, § 218.5
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) In any action brought for the nonpayment of wages, fringe benefits, or health and welfare or pension fund contributions, the court shall award reasonable attorney’s fees and costs to the prevailing party if any party to the action requests attorney’s fees and costs upon the initiation of the action. However, if the prevailing party in the court action is not an employee, attorney’s fees and costs shall be awarded pursuant to this section only if the court finds that the employee brought the court action in bad faith. This section shall not apply to an action brought by the Labor Commissioner. This section shall not apply to a surety issuing a bond pursuant to Chapter 9 (commencing with Section 7000) of Division 3 of the Business and Professions Code or to an action to enforce a mechanics lien brought under Chapter 4 (commencing with Section 8400) of Title 2 of Part 6 of Division 4 of the Civil Code.
(b) This section does not apply to any cause of action for which attorney’s fees are recoverable under Section 1194.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended (as amended by Stats. 2010, Ch. 697, Sec. 42) by Stats. 2013, Ch. 142, Sec. 1. (SB 462) Effective January 1, 2014.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=218.5.
- Text hash
- sha256 397f0a5a53fbb4f5bec2d55ac046f46187cd9a96c7431ea07f49ed47578f4db5
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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Business and Professions Code
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