De Los Santos Martinez v. 11 Kitchen Inc.

Background

The parties in this Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) wage-and-hour case reached a proposed settlement and submitted the settlement materials for court approval under Cheeks v. Freeport Pancake House, Inc. The materials included the settlement agreement in Spanish and English, the plaintiffs’ retainer agreements, an affidavit of confession of judgment, and attorney billing records.

On August 7, 2025, the court found three deficiencies in the original agreement and ordered the parties to revise and resubmit it. On August 11, 2025, the parties submitted a revised agreement that corrected two of those deficiencies.

Court’s Analysis

The revised agreement required six monthly settlement payments of $10,000 each. Each payment was to be made by a check payable to Stillman Legal PC, the plaintiffs’ counsel, and delivered to the firm. But the agreement did not specify how much of each installment would go to Cornelio De Los Santos Martinez, how much would go to Martin De Los Santos, or how much the firm would receive for attorneys’ fees and costs.

The court explained that it could not determine from the agreement whether each installment would be divided among the plaintiffs and counsel or whether some installments would be allocated to the plaintiffs and later installments to counsel. Because the allocation was unclear, the court could not approve the agreement in its current form.

Ruling

Magistrate Judge Sarah L. Cave ordered the parties, on or before August 19, 2025, to revise the agreement to state, for each installment payment, the amount each plaintiff would receive and the amount counsel would receive for attorneys’ fees and costs. The order did not approve the settlement as submitted.