Perez v. EONS - Greek Food For Life LLC
- Analisa Torres
- 1:20-cv-01121
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Perez v. EONS, Judge Torres approved a settlement of FLSA wage claims and accepted a $10,000 attorney-fee award.
Catarino Perez, the listed EONS entities, George Georgiades, and Perez’s counsel. The order approved a $30,000 settlement, including $20,000 in damages and $10,000 in attorney’s fees and costs.
What happened
In Perez v. EONS – Greek Food For Life LLC, Catarino Perez sued the defendants for allegedly unpaid minimum and overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The parties reached a settlement and asked the court to approve it.
The settlement required the defendants to pay $30,000: $20,000 in damages and $10,000 for attorney’s fees and costs. The court found the settlement fair and reasonable based on the possible recovery, litigation risks, avoided expenses, negotiations, and lack of evidence of fraud or collusion. It also found that the release, nondisparagement clause, and absence of a confidentiality provision were acceptable.
Judge Analisa Torres approved the settlement and found the $10,000 fee award reasonable after reducing the hourly rates used in the attorneys’ fee calculation. The court directed the Clerk of Court to close the case.
The detailed version
- Perez v. EONS - Greek Food For Life LLC · No. 1:20-cv-01121
- Analisa Torres
- Aug. 12, 2020
Background
Catarino Perez brought claims against EONS – GREEK FOOD FOR LIFE, LLC, the other listed EONS entities, and George Georgiades for, among other things, allegedly unpaid minimum and overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). After the parties reached a settlement, they asked the court to approve their agreement.
Settlement Approval
The proposed settlement required the defendants to pay $30,000 total: $20,000 to Perez for damages and $10,000 for attorney’s fees and costs. Perez estimated his unpaid wages at $41,492 and estimated that his full recovery could have been as much as $106,685.30. The defendants maintained that Perez had been paid in full for his hours worked and that their defenses could have defeated or substantially reduced his recovery at trial.
The court applied the requirement that an FLSA settlement be fair and reasonable. It considered the possible recovery, the litigation expenses the settlement would avoid, the parties’ litigation risks, the parties’ assertion that they negotiated at arm’s length with substantial information exchanged, and the absence of evidence of fraud or collusion. The court also found that the release was not overly broad because it covered only the defendants and closely related entities and was limited to claims connected to the action or earlier wage-and-hour claims. The nondisparagement clause was acceptable because it allowed truthful statements about the parties’ experiences litigating the case. The agreement did not contain a confidentiality provision.
Attorney’s Fees
The court separately reviewed the requested $10,000 in attorney’s fees and costs, which equaled one-third of the total recovery. As a cross-check, the court used a lodestar calculation, meaning an estimate based on reasonable hourly rates multiplied by reasonable hours. The court reduced the hourly rates from $800 to $450 for C.K. Lee, from $350 to $200 for the two junior associates, and from $275 to $125 for the four paralegals. These rates produced a lodestar of $9,777.50. The court did not add the requested $592 in costs because counsel provided no proof that the costs were incurred or reasonable. Even without those costs, the requested $10,000 award was only slightly higher than the lodestar, so the court found it reasonable.
Disposition
The court granted the parties’ motion for settlement approval and directed the Clerk of Court to close the case.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.