Legal Question in Business Law in California

When an employee quits and it's entirely voluntary, he/she is not entitled to any acceleration of the payment date.

You must pay an employee in full within 72 hours of the quit date if the employee leaves voluntarily. Labor Code Section 201(b). Failure to do so will result in penalties pursuant to Labor Code Section 203 and open you up to the payment of the employee's attorneys fees.

If the 72-hour rule requires an accelerated payroll, then the employee must accelerate the payroll for the employee in question. To this extent, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Whipple.

Mr. Whipple is entirely incorrect, and Mr. Perry leaves out one key point. Not only are you obligated to provide a full final paycheck within 72 hours, that only applies if they don't give notice. If they give you notice of 72 hours or more, you must have their full final paycheck for them on their last day. Failure to provide a final check on the last day results in a penalty of one day's pay for every day the final check is delayed (the Labor Code section 203 penalties Mr. Perry mentions) plus attorneys' fees.

In case of resignation, Section 202 of the state Labor Code mandates that payment of wages and other benefits be made within 72 hours. I just read the entire code section word for word for about the 20th time.