In Starbucks Corp. v. Superior Court (2008) 168 Cal.App.4th 1436, the representative plaintiffs and an estimated class of 135,000 Starbucks job applicants who sought jobs throughout California, claimed entitlement to $ 200 each, as well as costs and attorney fees, simply because they filled out job applications that violated section 432.8. The plaintiffs conceded they had no marijuana-related convictions and no harm resulted from the job applications. (Starbucks, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1442, 1447-1448.) After analyzing sections 432.7 and 432.8, the court held: "Only an individual with a marijuana-related conviction falls within the class of people the Legislature sought to protect. We see nothing in the statute to support plaintiffs' claim that the Legislature intended to protect the privacy interests of job applications who had no marijuana convictions in their background. . . . We decline to adopt an interpretation that would turn the statute into a veritable financial bonanza for litigants like plaintiffs who had no fear of stigmatizing marijuana convictions." (Starbucks, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th at p. 1449.) The court explained that "where civil liability is predicated upon a legislative provision . . . , plaintiffs must establish that they fall within the class of persons for whose protection the legislative provision was enacted. 'The statute must be designed to protect against the kind of harm which occurred.' " (Id. at p. 1448.) The Starbucks court discussed numerous instances in which courts declined to interpret certain words in statutes literally, when it was antithetical to legislative intent and would lead to absurd results, such as statutory penalties wholly disproportionate to any harm and unrelated to the discernible goal. (Starbucks, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1450-1451) "Section 432.8 was enacted during the 1970's as part of comprehensive reform legislation which was designed to distinguish minor marijuana offenses from more serious felony drug offenses and to 'minimize or eliminate the lingering social stigma flowing from what's now perceived to be a relatively minor form of criminal activity.'" (Starbucks, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th 1436, 1443.) Section 432.7 already prohibited employers from asking job applicants "to disclose, through any written form or verbally," information about arrests that did not result in a conviction. ( 432.7, subd. (a).) "The marijuana reform legislation extended this prohibition to marijuana convictions that are more than two years old." (Starbucks, supra, at p. 1444; 432.8.) In Starbucks, the court found section 432.7, subdivision (c) ambiguous, particularly in the context of legislative intent, and it narrowly construed the term "the applicant" to include only persons who have marijuana-related convictions "in accordance with the traditional principle that the applicant be a person who has been aggrieved by the statutory violation." (Starbucks, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th at p. 1451.) The court noted that section 432.7, subdivision (c) "does not expressly provide that any applicant may recover a minimum of $ 200 as a statutory penalty for an employer asking a prohibited question on a job application, regardless of any nexus to a marijuana conviction lurking somewhere in his or her past. Had the Legislature intended to bestow a cause of action for an automatic recovery of $ 200 upon "any" applicant, it easily could have done so. Instead, the statute ambiguously provides that, for violations of section 432.8, 'the applicant may bring an action to recover from that person actual damages or two hundred dollars ($ 200) . . . .' " (Starbucks, supra, 168 Cal.App.4th at p. 1448.)