Tokuichi v. Perrone
- Ronnie Abrams
- 1:19-cv-01749
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Tokuichi v. Perrone, Judge Abrams directed the parties to address their reported Fair Labor Standards Act settlement by December 17, 2019.
Yoko Tokuichi, Kimberly Perrone, and Urban Oasis Design LLC d/b/c Bloom Flowers, the parties to the case.
What happened
Tokuichi v. Perrone is a Fair Labor Standards Act case that the parties reported had been settled in principle.
The court gave the parties three choices by December 17, 2019: consent to have a magistrate judge handle the rest of the case, file a voluntary dismissal without prejudice, or explain why the settlement was fair and reasonable and provide supporting materials.
Judge Ronnie Abrams also warned that materials used to evaluate the settlement could be made public and identified settlement terms the court would not approve, including overly broad claim waivers and bans on truthful negative statements about the litigation experience.
The detailed version
- Tokuichi v. Perrone · No. 1:19-cv-01749
- Ronnie Abrams
- Nov. 26, 2019
Background
The opinion states that this Fair Labor Standards Act case had been reported to the court as settled in principle. It does not state that the court had approved the settlement or that the parties had completed it.
Order
The court directed the parties to take one of three actions by December 17, 2019:
- Consent to have Magistrate Judge Parker conduct all further proceedings.
- Submit a stipulation or notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41, which would allow the case to be refiled.
- Submit a joint letter explaining why the settlement was fair and reasonable, along with supporting materials, including contemporaneous billing records for the attorney fees and costs included in the settlement.
The court advised that materials on which it relied in deciding whether the settlement was fair could be placed on the public docket because judicial documents are generally presumed to be publicly accessible. The court also stated that it would not approve agreements that broadly waived unrelated or unknown claims, or that barred the plaintiff from making negative statements about the defendants without an exception for truthful statements about the plaintiff's experience litigating the case.
Disposition
Judge Ronnie Abrams did not decide the underlying wage-and-hour claims or approve the settlement in this order. Instead, the court issued directions concerning the parties' reported settlement and the next required filing or consent.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.