Santiago v. The Tequila Gastropub LLC
- Jesse Furman
- 1:16-cv-07499
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Santiago v. The Tequila Gastropub, Judge Furman enforced the settlement and awarded reduced attorney fees.
The plaintiffs, the defendants, and plaintiffs’ counsel were affected. The settlement was enforced against the parties, and plaintiffs’ counsel received an attorney-fee award calculated at reduced hourly rates.
What happened
In Santiago v. The Tequila Gastropub LLC, the plaintiffs asked the court to enforce a settlement agreement that the court had approved on January 25, 2018. The opinion excerpt does not describe the settlement’s terms.
The defendants were required to oppose the enforcement motion by April 29, 2020, but did not file an opposition. The plaintiffs therefore asked the court to grant their motion as unopposed.
Judge Jesse M. Furman granted the motion to enforce the settlement agreement. He denied counsel’s request for hourly rates of $550 for attorney Anne Seelig and $125 for her paralegal, instead awarding fees using hourly rates of $300 and $85, for a total of $427.50.
The detailed version
- Santiago v. The Tequila Gastropub LLC · No. 1:16-cv-07499
- Jesse Furman
- Apr. 30, 2020
Background
The plaintiffs moved to enforce a settlement agreement that the court had approved on January 25, 2018. The excerpt does not state the settlement’s terms or explain the underlying claims in detail, although it refers to the matter as an FLSA/NYLL action in discussing attorney-fee rates.
Procedural history and positions
The court’s April 22, 2020 order required the defendants to file any opposition to the enforcement motion by April 29, 2020. The plaintiffs filed proof that they had served the order on the defendants. After the defendants failed to file an opposition, plaintiffs’ counsel asked the court to grant the motion as unopposed.
Rulings
The court granted the motion to enforce the settlement agreement, for substantially the reasons stated in the plaintiffs’ memorandum of law. The court stated that courts may summarily enforce settlement agreements.
The court denied counsel’s request for attorney-fee rates of $550 per hour for Ms. Seelig and $125 per hour for her paralegal, finding those rates unreasonably high based on decisions from the Southern District of New York and another federal court. The court instead awarded attorney fees using hourly rates of $300 for Ms. Seelig and $85 for the paralegal, for a total of $427.50. The opinion excerpt refers to the paralegal as Ms. Driver in the fee award. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate ECF No. 67.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.