After one day of deliberation, a jury on July 10, 2001, awarded the claims adjusters just over $90 million on claims they were denied overtime pay in violation of state law. The trial addressed only damages, since a 1999 grant of summary judgment on liability was upheld by the appeals court on March 5, 2001. The U.S. Supreme Court in November 2001 refused to review the state appeals court's decision.

The action alleged that Farmers attempted to avoid paying employees overtime by classifying them as administrative employees. The court looked to parallel provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act to construe provisions of the state's "Wage Order No. 4." The court ruled that federal law provides a useful approach for determining whether a person works in an administrative capacity. That approach, the "administrative/production worker dichotomy," calls for a distinction between workers who conduct the business affairs of the enterprise and those who produce its commodities.

In light of the record, the appeals court in the earlier decision concluded that the claims representatives fell "squarely on the production side of the administrative/production worker dichotomy," because claims adjusting was the sole mission of the 70 branch offices where they worked. It found that the plaintiffs processed a large number of small claims, which placed them in the "sphere of rank and file production workers.