State drops wage case against Rock n' Roll Car Wash, 19 months after it was forced to close. Owner Chris McKenna says that they have acted as 'judge, jury and executioner' in his case.
Owner Chris McKenna says a bond demand shut the PCH car wash before he ever got a hearing. His lawsuit against the Labor Commissioner is still pending.
A California Labor Commissioner hearing officer has dismissed a $249,007 wage citation against Rock N Roll Car Wash, the Pacific Coast Highway business that closed in February 2025 after the state moved against its surety bond.
The 41-page decision by hearing officer Iman Nelson, dated Sept. 30 and obtained by The Hermosa Review, dismissed every part of the citation: minimum and contract wages, overtime, rest periods, liquidated damages, waiting time penalties and wage statement violations. It also found no personal liability for Redondo Beach resident McKenna or his co-owners, Michael Wuerth and Kenneth Crow.
The car wash at 1000 Pacific Coast Highway did not survive to see the ruling. McKenna and his partners were forced to sell it at a huge loss while waiting for his hearing.
On Dec. 5, 2024, the Labor Commissioner's Office cited Rock N Roll Car Wash LLC and Redondo Auto Spa LLC, for a combined $810,920. The two businesses accounted for most of the $1.3 million in penalties the office announced Dec. 10 against 19 car washes in the South Bay and Orange County.
The state said the two car washes failed to register with its office, failed to pay the correct minimum wage and denied workers required rest breaks. It said workers reported retaliation after cooperating with investigators, including firings and cut hours, and that retaliation investigations were underway.
The investigations began in September 2022 after a referral from the Community Labor Environmental Action Network, or CLEAN, a nonprofit that advocates for car wash workers. Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower said in the announcement that many car washes skip the state's registration and bond requirements to avoid labor law.
Days after the citations, workers from both businesses protested outside Redondo Car Wash. Matthew DeCarolis, an attorney with Bet Tzedek Legal Services, told ABC7 the violations included minimum wage, overtime, rest break and payroll record violations.
McKenna, a co-owner of both car washes, denied the claims at the time and said every worker had been paid. "We have all the records ever since we opened," he told the station.
California requires car washes to post a $150,000 surety bond to cover unpaid wages. The Legislature raised the amount from $15,000 in 2013. A car wash without a bond cannot legally operate.
In early January 2025, before any hearing on the citations, a deputy labor commissioner demanded the surety pay the full $150,000 on each car wash's bond, according to McKenna's lawsuit. The complaint says McKenna received no notice before the demands were made.
The surety canceled both bonds. Other sureties declined to write new ones while the state's claims were pending, according to the foundation. Both car washes closed Feb. 16, 2025, and more than 30 employees lost their jobs.
The foundation claims that McKenna sold Rock N Roll at a $5 million loss and that the state later sought $750,000 to settle. McKenna says that he had no other choice than to sell the business in distress. He says "it had a 20 year lease and was worth millions more than it was in these forced circumstances."
The citation grew out of an investigation by Deputy Labor Commissioner Jose Guzman, who inspected the car wash with three other deputies on Oct. 13, 2023. His audit covered 14 workers and assessed $249,007.52.
The audit rested on one central claim: that managers made workers show up and wait, unpaid, before letting them clock in. Nine former workers testified for the state over eight days of remote hearings in October and November 2025. Several said they waited one to two hours in a break room before being allowed to start, and that they rarely or never got rest breaks.
The decision found that testimony unreliable, citing inconsistencies and evasive answers. Workers said there was too little work to let them clock in but too much work to allow breaks, a contradiction the decision said severely undermined their credibility. In some cases, signed interview notes contradicted what workers said at the hearing.
The audit drew the sharpest criticism. Investigator Guzman moved start times back to 7:30 or 8 a.m. for workers whose time clock records showed later starts, though the workers had not given him dates when they were kept from clocking in. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that not every worker reported waiting and that he did not know when employees actually started work. He assumed a missed rest break on every day an employee worked more than 6.5 hours, and he could not explain how the overtime violations were calculated, the decision says.
The investigation did find one real underpayment. Payroll records at the inspection showed some workers earning $15 an hour, 50 cents below the minimum wage. McKenna testified that he relied on an external payroll company and learned of the gap from the deputy. The car wash issued back pay on Nov. 3 and Nov. 11, 2023, more than a year before the citation. The decision says Guzman testified he knew of the payments but did not adjust the audit or the citation.
On personal liability, the decision found Crow and Wuerth were investors with no role in daily operations, and that the case against McKenna relied mainly on hearsay. Managers Carlos Hernandez and Nimrod Josue Lima ran hiring, firing and day-to-day operations, it found. Guzman admitted he lacked actual evidence to hold the three owners individually liable, according to the decision.
The hearing ended in November 2025, nine months after the car wash closed. The decision came 10 months after that.
McKenna and his companies sued García-Brower in Los Angeles County Superior Court in June 2025. The case is Redondo Auto Spa, LLC et al. v. Lilia Garcia-Brower.
The suit argues that state law sends bond claims to court, where the business and the surety can appear before a judge, and that the Labor Commissioner skipped that step. It contends one deputy commissioner acted as investigator, prosecutor and enforcer, violating due process and separation of powers under the state constitution. It also claims the closure amounted to an uncompensated regulatory taking.
The state responded with a demurrer, a motion to dismiss the case on legal grounds. The foundation filed its opposition in August 2025.
Allison Daniel, a foundation attorney, said the hearing outcome supports the lawsuit's central argument. Due process means "the government proves its claims first, not after the damage is done," she said in the foundation's statement.
The suit asks the court to bar the Labor Commissioner from collecting on a car wash's bond without first giving the owner notice and a meaningful chance to be heard.
Rock N Roll took over the former Hermosa Beach Hand Car Wash site on PCH. McKenna ran it with partner Ken Crow, and the business was voted best car wash in Easy Reader's Best of the Beach readers' poll in 2017 and 2022. The same group of owners opened Redondo Car Wash on Torrance Boulevard after demolishing a car wash there that had sat vacant since 2002. The Hermosa location looks set to reopen under new ownership shortly after a lengthy period of renovation.
Chris McKenna remains angry and distraught at the process. He says "I spent 12 years building up that business. The State of California has taken it away from me without due process, and I am financially ruined as a result. But I will fight for compensation."
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