Hamilton v. Talia's Restaurant Group, LLC
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:19-cv-09311
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Hamilton v. Talia's Restaurant Group, Judge Caproni ordered counsel to clarify a proposed Fair Labor Standards Act dismissal and settlement.
Nikola Hamilton, his counsel, Talia's Restaurant Group, LLC, Ephraim Nagar, and any future proceedings involving the same defendants.
What happened
In Hamilton v. Talia's Restaurant Group, LLC, Nikola Hamilton filed a notice dismissing his Fair Labor Standards Act case against all defendants without prejudice. The order addressed what the parties must do if the dismissal involved a settlement.
The court required Hamilton’s lawyer to confirm that Hamilton understood he could sue the defendants again and that no settlement released the defendants from liability. If such a release existed, the parties had to submit the settlement for court approval.
Judge Valerie Caproni set November 22, 2019, as the filing deadline and warned that the case could be reopened later. If the required filings were not made, the court scheduled a December 6 conference.
The detailed version
- Hamilton v. Talia's Restaurant Group, LLC · No. 1:19-cv-09311
- Valerie Caproni
- Nov. 14, 2019
Background
Nikola Hamilton sued Talia's Restaurant Group, LLC, doing business as Talia’s Steakhouse, and Ephraim Nagar. The opinion identifies the action as an FLSA case. On November 14, 2019, Hamilton filed a notice dismissing the case without prejudice against all defendants under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41.
Issue
The order noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had not yet decided whether parties may settle an FLSA case without court or Department of Labor approval and then dismiss it without prejudice through a Rule 41 notice. The order also addressed the consequences of a dismissal without prejudice: it would not prevent Hamilton from filing another lawsuit against the same defendants, assuming the filing deadline had not expired.
Order
The court ordered Hamilton’s counsel to file an affirmation by November 22, 2019, stating that Hamilton had been clearly advised that the settlement did not prevent him from bringing another lawsuit against the defendants and affirming that no settlement agreement released the defendants from liability.
If the parties had reached a settlement releasing the defendants from liability, the court ordered them to submit the proposed settlement and a letter requesting court approval by November 22, 2019. The court warned that this type of resolution risked the case being reopened later. If no letter or stipulation was filed by that date, the court ordered a conference for December 6, 2019, at 10:00 a.m. The order did not itself approve a settlement or resolve the broader question of whether an FLSA settlement could be dismissed without approval.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.