Aviles v. Heidi’s House LLC
- Jesse Furman
- 1:25-cv-02034
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Aviles v. Heidi’s House LLC, Judge Furman partly granted the application, ordering payroll-record retrieval and setting a conference on the remaining issues.
The order directly affects Elliot Aviles and the defendants in the case. It requires the defendants to obtain and produce responsive ADP records and requires the parties to attend a conference about the remaining issues.
What happened
In Aviles v. Heidi’s House LLC, Elliot Aviles asked the court to require the defendants to obtain additional payroll records from ADP and to prevent undisclosed witnesses from testifying at trial. The lawsuit concerns alleged unpaid overtime and inadequate wage notices and statements under federal and New York law.
The court granted the application in part. It ordered the defendants to obtain and produce all responsive records from ADP within two weeks. For the other issues raised in the application, including the request concerning undisclosed witnesses, the court scheduled an in-person conference for November 6, 2025, rather than ruling on them in this order.
Judge Jesse M. Furman also directed the clerk to terminate docket entry 25. The order does not state that the court granted or denied the requested witness-preclusion relief.
The detailed version
- Aviles v. Heidi’s House LLC · No. 1:25-cv-02034
- Jesse Furman
- Nov. 3, 2025
Background
Elliot Aviles brought claims alleging failure to pay overtime wages and failure to provide required wage notices and statements under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law. Aviles previously moved to compel the defendants to produce payroll records. The defendants represented that they had produced all payroll records within their possession, custody, or control and could not locate additional payroll or related records. The court denied that earlier motion as moot but warned that sanctions could result if the representation later proved incorrect.
After discovery closed, David Hazan testified that the restaurant had used ADP, a payroll service, before the period covered by the records produced by the defendants. Aviles argued that the defendants had failed to contact ADP to obtain responsive records and asked the court to require them to do so, with possible further relief if the records could not be obtained.
Aviles also asked the court to bar the defendants from using at trial witnesses who were not identified in their initial disclosures under Rule 26(a)(1). The defendants’ initial disclosures identified David Hazan and Beth Hazan, while their interrogatory responses identified additional people who might have information about Aviles’s hours, including Rosendo Fernandez and Cipriano Pita. Aviles argued that merely naming people in interrogatory responses did not satisfy the disclosure rule and that allowing those witnesses to testify would unfairly prejudice him.
Order
The court granted the application in part. It ordered the defendants to obtain and produce any and all responsive records from ADP within two weeks of the order’s date.
As to the other issues raised in the application, the court ordered the parties to appear for an in-person conference on November 6, 2025, at 10:15 a.m. in Courtroom 24B of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse. The order does not state that the court granted or denied Aviles’s request to preclude undisclosed witnesses, nor does it state that the court imposed sanctions, awarded fees, or reopened discovery.
The clerk was directed to terminate docket entry 25.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.