Lu v. Purple Sushi, Inc.

Background

Qiang Lu, Yongbing Qi, and Zhenhua Duan brought wage-and-hour claims concerning their work as delivery persons at a Manhattan sushi restaurant. They alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the New York Labor Law (NYLL), including claims involving minimum wage and overtime pay.

A jury found Yami Yami, Inc., Jianfou Zhou, Mingjie Wang, and Zenan Li liable for various NYLL violations. The court later entered a default judgment against Purple Sushi, Inc. and Xing Chen for violations of the FLSA and NYLL. The court granted that default-judgment motion on some counts, dismissed the plaintiffs’ remaining three counts against those defendants, and dismissed the Purple Sushi Defendants’ cross-claims.

The plaintiffs then sought $116,277.00 in attorneys’ fees and $6,250.50 in costs. The Yami Yami Defendants opposed the request. The Purple Sushi Defendants did not oppose it.

Billing Records and Hourly Rates

The Yami Yami Defendants argued that the plaintiffs’ lawyers had created their billing records after the fact and that the entire fee request should be rejected. The court denied that request because similarities among billing entries, without additional evidence showing that the records were inaccurate or created later, were insufficient to disregard the records entirely.

The court nevertheless found that the requested hourly rates were unreasonable for this case. It approved rates of $350 per hour for John Troy and $225 per hour for Aaron Schweitzer’s legal work. It approved $112.50 per hour for Schweitzer’s travel and ministerial work, $75 per hour for Tiffany Troy’s work before bar admission, $150 per hour for her work after bar admission, $100 per hour for Preethi Kilaru, and $70 per hour for Gavin Dass and Tina Chuang.

The court considered the relatively straightforward wage-and-hour issues, the result obtained, the resources needed, and rates approved in other cases in the district. It rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that higher rates were justified by increases in New York’s minimum wage or by the higher rates awarded in some other matters.

Hours Billed

The court found the billed hours somewhat excessive. It cited repeated entries for similar tasks, attorney billing for work that could have been performed by a paralegal or junior attorney, substantial time billed for deposition transcription, and unusually large amounts of time for tasks such as entering names into a database and printing envelopes. It also noted errors in the fee declaration that appeared to reflect recycled material from another matter.

The court declined to exclude all time spent on the plaintiffs’ conditional collective-action certification motion. Although that motion had succeeded only in part and no additional plaintiffs joined the case, the court did not find the motion so unreasonable that all related time should be denied. Instead, it reduced the billed hours across the board by 15 percent.

Costs and Disposition

The plaintiffs did not provide supporting documents for the requested costs. The court therefore awarded only the $400 filing fee.

The court awarded $52,275.13 in attorneys’ fees and $400 in costs. The amounts were allocated as follows:

- $18,610.16 in fees due jointly and severally from the Yami Yami Defendants; - $6,594.68 in fees due jointly and severally from the Purple Sushi Defendants; and - $27,070.29 in fees and $400 in costs due jointly and severally from all defendants.

A joint-and-several obligation means that the designated defendants are each responsible for the applicable amount, subject to the allocation stated by the court.