Murray v. City Of New York, New York
- P. Castel
- 1:16-cv-08072
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Murray v. City of New York, Judge Castel rejected a proposed job-title-based jury trial for individual wage claims.
The plaintiffs, including the 13 individual trial plaintiffs and the remaining plaintiffs, and the City of New York; the ruling concerns how their individual claims could be tried.
What happened
In Murray v. City of New York, the parties proposed using one of two verdict sheets depending on whether a revised agreement was approved. The second version would have replaced 13 individual trial plaintiffs with job titles such as “Community Assistant” and “Associate Fraud Investigator.”
The proposed jury would have decided the average number of unpaid post-shift minutes worked each week by people in each job title. The court said this would not decide the claims of individual parties and compared it to the Supreme Court’s disapproved “trial by formula” approach, although the proposal here was made with the parties’ consent.
Judge Castel concluded that holding a jury trial in this non-class action to decide claims based only on job titles was a “novel project” and a “non-starter.” The court said the parties could instead agree that trial results for the trial plaintiffs would guide or bind decisions involving the remaining plaintiffs, but the order does not state that it granted or denied a motion.
The detailed version
- Murray v. City Of New York, New York · No. 1:16-cv-08072
- P. Castel
- May 6, 2020
Background
The court had issued an order on April 29, 2020, without examining the plaintiffs’ two proposed verdict sheets. One verdict sheet would apply if a stipulation was approved, and the other would apply if it was not. The plaintiffs’ second version was intended for use if the revised stipulation and order were entered.
The case was not a class action. The second verdict sheet removed the 13 individual trial plaintiffs and substituted job titles, including “Community Assistant” and “Associate Fraud Investigator.” It would have asked the jury to determine, on average, how many post-shift minutes per week a person with a particular job title worked without being paid.
Court’s Analysis
The court explained that ordinary litigation is conducted for the individual named parties. It cited the Supreme Court’s rejection of “trial by formula,” in which a sample of claims is decided and the results are applied to the rest of a group without additional individualized proceedings.
The court recognized differences between that rejected approach and the parties’ proposal, especially that the proposal was made by consent. But the court said the proposed trial would still have an Article III court and jury deciding an abstraction—described as “Trial by Job Title”—rather than adjudicating the claims of individual parties. The court also noted that the proposed average might not represent the time worked by any of the trial plaintiffs and that the proposal did not clearly identify which workers would be included in calculating the average.
Ruling
Judge P. Castel stated that a jury trial in a non-class action resolving claims of people identified only by job title was a “novel project” and a “non-starter.” The court said the parties could agree to a test or “bellwether” trial in which verdicts on the trial plaintiffs’ claims would bind the remaining plaintiffs on some or all issues, or could guide settlement of those claims.
The opinion does not expressly identify a motion that was granted or denied, and it does not use a dismissal or other case-disposition term. Its ruling rejects the proposed job-title-based verdict-sheet approach.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.