Nine Workers Hospitalized, a Lawsuit Over Three Lost Fingers, a $1.5 Million Wage Settlement: Duarte Nursery’s Record With Its Workers.

At an April debate, Alexandra Duarte said the district needs someone who “will fight for our rural communities, our working people.” Her family’s business, Duarte Nursery in Hughson, reported 308 jobs on a 2020 federal pandemic loan, and it also brings in workers through farm labor contractors. Court filings and state and federal safety records describe how some of them have fared.

A farm laborer lost three fingers on a trimming machine the nursery built, according to a lawsuit, and state regulators cited the nursery under rules on machine guards and shutting machinery down during adjustments. Nine workers were hospitalized for carbon monoxide exposure in a nursery greenhouse; the fine was $3,375. And three times, in 2015, 2018 and 2026, workers have filed proposed class actions saying the nursery didn’t pay hourly employees everything they were owed or give them the breaks the law requires. The 2015 case ended in a $1.5 million settlement, paid in 2025. No court has ruled on any of the lawsuits’ claims, and Duarte Nursery has denied those it has answered. Its responses are summarized below.

Case 1 · Injury lawsuit · 2021–present

Three fingers and a homemade trimmer

On Nov. 18, 2021, a farm laborer was adjusting a tree-trimming machine at Duarte Nursery’s facility on Baldwin Road in Hughson when, he later testified, it caught his left hand. “I felt it just grabbed my hand. I don’t know. It was so quick,” he said. “I had pulled my hand away, but it had already cut my fingers.” According to a lawsuit over the accident, he lost three fingers.

The machine was homemade. One lawsuit describes it as “a wheeled scaffolding with a platform of five elevated Honda lawnmowers and sharp exposed rotating blades.” Duarte Nursery says it built four of the trimmers for its own use and never sold them. The lawsuit alleges the trimmer lacked “any type of guard or warning mechanism” for the blades and that he was told to adjust the platform by hand “without turning off the machine or guarding against the exposed sharp rotating blades.”

Regulators cited the nursery

Cal/OSHA, the state workplace safety agency, inspected the nursery after the accident, according to Duarte Nursery’s own sworn answers in the lawsuit. A federal record of a Cal/OSHA inspection at the Hughson facility shows the same opening and closing dates, Dec. 15, 2021 and July 28, 2022. On May 11, 2022, that inspection produced three citations with $11,895 in penalties. The citation records do not name the machine:

• Serious, $5,735: Title 8, section 3314(c), which requires that machinery “be stopped and the power source de-energized or disengaged” during “cleaning, servicing and adjusting operations.”
• Serious, $5,735: Title 8, section 4184(b), which requires machines with cutting hazards to be guarded at the point of operation, where the cutting happens.
• Other than serious, $425: Title 8, section 3203(b)(2), which requires employers to keep records of each worker’s safety training.

Federal records, which include Cal/OSHA inspections, list the citations as issued and do not show that the company contested them. A follow-up inspection in April 2024 found no violations.

What is at stake for the worker

The worker was on the payroll of NextCrop, a labor contractor that placed him at the nursery. Whether he can sue Duarte Nursery turns on who counts as his employer. If the nursery was, in effect, his employer too, California law generally limits him to workers’ compensation. Workers’ comp provides five basic benefits, from medical care to disability payments; pain and suffering is not among them. He is suing for damages for pain and suffering, disfigurement, lost wages, and lost earning capacity.

Pacific Claims Management, which administered NextCrop’s workers’ comp and says it paid his benefits, sued first. In October 2023 it sued Duarte Nursery; another labor contractor, Green Valley Labor; and a Green Valley Labor employee who worked alongside him, to recover about $143,400 in benefits, a figure it later put at about $145,700. It alleges negligence against all three and premises and product liability against the nursery. The worker joined the case in March 2024. These are allegations that a court has not decided.

Who is responsible

The defendants blame each other. The insurer’s complaint says the Green Valley Labor employee told the worker to adjust the platform. Green Valley Labor and its employee deny the allegations, blame the worker and others, and asked that Duarte Nursery cover any judgment against them. In June 2024, Duarte Nursery filed its own cross-complaint, alleging that any injuries were “the direct and proximate result of the negligence and/or wrongful conduct” of Green Valley Labor and its employee, “through no fault of” the nursery.

On Aug. 3, 2026, Duarte Nursery dropped that cross-complaint. Two days later, it asked the court to end the case without a trial. Its motions argue that the nursery itself directed and controlled his work, making him its “special employee”: it assigned his work each day, trained him, supplied his tools, and directed how he worked. If so, it argues, workers’ comp is his only remedy and he cannot sue it. It also argues that the product liability claim fails because it never sold the trimmer, and that state insurance law makes NextCrop’s insurer solely responsible for the benefits.

When Duarte Nursery first answered the lawsuits, in May 2024, its lawyer also used a peremptory challenge to remove the assigned judge, John D. Freeland, who in 2022 had ruled against the nursery on its contract terms in the pistachio case. California lets each side remove one judge this way without proving anything. Such challenges are routine, and the filing gives no reason; the law requires a declaration, which the lawyer signed, stating that the judge “is prejudiced against the defendant or defendant’s counsel.”

What the record shows about training

In sworn answers to the worker’s questions, Duarte Nursery said he “was provided training and instruction” and “failed to follow training and instruction, and did not use reasonable care.” Its operations manager, Frank Olide, said in a declaration that the nursery trained him and his co-worker on the trimmer and “instructed workers to not place any part of their bodies near the mower blades.” The nursery’s own “Mower/Tree Trimmer Safety Training” presentation tells workers: “Never work on the equipment while it is running.” It includes summaries of federal investigations in which workers lost fingers to mower blades.

In a November 2025 deposition given through an interpreter, the worker testified that Duarte supervisors assigned his work, told him how high to trim, and supplied his gloves, boots, and tools. He said his crew leader showed him how to use and adjust the trimmer once, when he started on it. Asked whether he was told to turn the blades off before raising or lowering it, he said: “Well, I don’t recall, but I would assume.” Green Valley Labor’s filing cites other testimony in which he said the crew leader had told him the machine needed to be turned off to level and adjust it. He said that on the morning of the accident, he and a co-worker set the height, started the mowers and then saw that the trimmer needed “a little bit of adjustment.”

Olide also explained why the nursery uses labor contractors: they give it flexibility and “decrease the administrative burden of onboarding, payroll, and immigration documentation for parts of its workforce.” He said the contractors had no say over the work. The leader of the worker’s crew, Olide said, “answered directly to Jeff Duarte, the President of Operations and an owner” of the nursery.

Witnesses the worker’s lawyers can’t reach

The worker’s lawyers say they have not been able to depose six people who worked at the nursery at the time, including the leader of his crew. According to their Sept. 28, 2026 filing, Duarte Nursery told them in May and June that all six are former employees and has not offered dates to make any of them available. Each must be personally served with a subpoena; the filing says an investigator reached one, but none has been served or deposed. The lawyers say the six can testify about who directed his work, who trained workers on the trimmer, and who built and maintained it, the central questions in the nursery’s motion. They plan to ask the court to delay the trial and all four summary judgment hearings by about 180 days.

As of the latest filings, hearings on the motions are set for Oct. 29, Oct. 30, Nov. 3 and Nov. 10, 2026, and trial for Dec. 1, 2026. Those dates may change.

Case 2 · Safety citations · 2013–2019

Nine workers hospitalized, a $3,375 fine

In 2019, nine Duarte Nursery employees were removing shoots from grapevines inside a greenhouse when they became ill. They were first treated for heat illness. When their symptoms didn’t improve, they were taken to the hospital and treated for carbon monoxide exposure. Regulators cited the company for a serious violation, the category used when a hazard could realistically cause death or serious harm, for failing to monitor airborne contaminants. The fine was $3,375 in all, for an incident that put nine people in the hospital.

In June 2013, an irrigator at the nursery had chest pain and trouble breathing while working, then collapsed. He was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. Regulators fined the company $5,000 for failing to report the death promptly. The records do not say the company caused his death.

Counting inspections from 2012 through 2021, years when John Duarte was the nursery’s president, workplace safety regulators cited Duarte Nursery eight times and issued $22,220 in fines, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2024.

Case 3 · Wage class action · 2026

A 2026 lawsuit: “off the clock”

On Jan. 21, 2026, a former Duarte Nursery worker filed a proposed class action against Duarte Nursery in Stanislaus County Superior Court. She says she worked for the nursery in Hughson as an hourly “Plant Sorting” employee from 2012 to 2022, and she is suing on behalf of herself and the nursery’s other non-exempt employees.

The complaint alleges that the nursery had “a policy and practice of failing to properly record the time worked by non-exempt employees, including all time spent working off the clock.” It also alleges that the nursery left bonuses and other pay out when calculating overtime and sick pay, did not provide all required meal and rest breaks or pay the premiums owed when it didn’t, and did not reimburse necessary business expenses. These are allegations. No court has ruled on them, and the court has not certified a class.

Off-the-clock work is work an employee does without being paid for it. For an hourly worker, a few unpaid minutes a day add up over months and years, and so do overtime and sick pay calculated at too low a rate. The lawsuit seeks repayment of those wages for the nursery’s hourly workforce, going back four years before it was filed.

How the case has changed

The original complaint listed nine claims, including separate claims for unpaid minimum wages and overtime, meal and rest period violations, unpaid sick time, inaccurate wage statements, and late final paychecks. In April, Duarte Nursery asked the court to dismiss eight of them, arguing they were filed after the three-year statute of limitations had run.

In May, before that request was heard, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint. It makes the same core allegations under a single claim, California’s Unfair Competition Law, which has a four-year deadline, and seeks repayment of unpaid wages. The proposed class is all current and former hourly employees who worked for the nursery in California from four years before the original filing through trial. On June 30, 2026, Duarte Nursery filed its answer.

Case 4 · Wage class action · 2018

A 2018 lawsuit: 10-hour shifts without breaks

In July 2018, a worker filed a proposed class action on behalf of everyone Duarte Nursery employed in California who worked a shift longer than 10 hours. The complaint alleges that for at least four years the nursery had “a consistent policy” of “requiring all Proposed Class Members to work at least ten (10) hours without a second meal period,” and of not providing a third rest break on those long shifts, without paying the extra hour of wages state law requires for each missed break. It also alleges that the nursery did not pay all wages owed when workers quit or were let go.

The case ended in September 2020, when the worker settled his own claims with the nursery on terms not in the court file. At his request, the court dismissed the claims he had brought on behalf of other workers, including penalty claims under the state’s Private Attorneys General Act, without prejudice, meaning others could still sue. His lawyer told the court that “discovery revealed several issues that made certification difficult and unlikely in this case.” No class was certified, and no court ruled on the claims.

Case 5 · Wage class action · 2015–2026

A 2015 lawsuit: a $1.5 million settlement

In April 2015, four current and former Duarte Nursery employees filed a proposed class action against the company and its leadership, including John Duarte. Their complaint alleges that the nursery failed to pay all the minimum wages it owed, failed to keep accurate time records, failed to provide rest and meal breaks, and failed to reimburse workers who paid for their own protective equipment.

For hourly farmworkers, those rules carry real money. California requires a paid 10-minute rest break for every four hours worked and a 30-minute meal break for shifts longer than five hours. An employer that fails to provide them owes an extra hour of pay for each workday it happens, according to the state Labor Commissioner’s office.

The case lasted nearly a decade. It ended in a settlement of the workers’ claims under California’s Private Attorneys General Act, a law that lets workers sue on the state’s behalf for penalties when an employer breaks the labor code. Judge Stacy Speiller approved the settlement in January 2025. According to the settlement administrator’s June 2026 report to the court, the defense paid $1,506,799.99 in two installments, in March and April 2025, and checks went out that June to 2,433 current and former workers.

Under the court’s orders, about $600,000 went to the workers’ lawyers, $100,000 to the four workers who brought the case, and nearly $500,000 to the state Labor and Workforce Development Agency, as PAGA requires. The 2,433 workers split more than $160,000 in penalties. A settlement is not a finding of wrongdoing, and no court ruled on the claims.

Alexandra Duarte, a Republican, is running for California State Senate District 4 on the Nov. 3, 2026 ballot. She is married to former Rep. John Duarte, who has served as the nursery’s president. Her 2023 salary from the nursery was $783,328, according to her husband’s House financial disclosure. She is not a named party in these cases.