Reilly v. The City of New York

Background

More than 70 plaintiffs and opt-in plaintiffs sued the City of New York and the New York City Police Department’s Building Maintenance Section under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Plaintiffs sought conditional certification of a collective action under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) and approval of a notice to potential members. The proposed collective covered current and former hourly trade workers assigned to the Building Maintenance Section who worked for a defendant during the applicable Fair Labor Standards Act limitations period and who consented to claims for legally due overtime compensation and liquidated damages.

After the motion was filed, the parties agreed on most of the requested relief. The remaining disputes concerned text-message notice and reminder notices.

Text-message notice

Plaintiffs asked defendants to produce last-known mobile telephone numbers so that notice could be sent by text message. The court denied that request. Plaintiffs argued that potential members might have changed residences and that defendants and supervisors had regularly used workers’ personal cell phones for work-related communications. The court found those points insufficient because defendants had agreed to email notice and plaintiffs had not shown that regular mail, email, and workplace posting would be inadequate.

Reminder notice

Plaintiffs also asked to send a reminder notice 30 days after the original notice. The court granted that request, finding a reminder appropriate here. To address defendants’ concern that a reminder could be viewed as court encouragement to participate, the court required the reminder to say: “The Court neither encourages nor discourages participation in the lawsuit.”

Order and disposition

The court authorized a collective consisting of the specified current and former hourly trade workers, including workers in listed trades and workers with different titles who performed the same or similar duties. Within 30 days, defendants had to provide a computer-readable file containing potential members’ names, last-known mailing addresses, known email addresses, trade designations, and employment dates for people who worked for defendants from January 20, 2020, to the present.

Defendants had to post the notice at the Building Maintenance Section headquarters at 50-98 59th Place, Woodside, New York 11377, and separately in each trade shop’s office there. Plaintiffs could send notice by regular mail and email, post it on plaintiffs’ counsel’s website for electronic consent-to-join forms, and use a 60-day notice period. The court also ordered that equitable tolling run from July 23, 2024.

Judge Subramanian concluded that plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification and approval of a collective-action notice was GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. The Clerk was directed to terminate Docket No. 106.