Rojas Martinez v. East Side Pizza Corp.
- Ronnie Abrams
- 1:21-cv-05335
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Rojas Martinez v. East Side Pizza Corp., Judge Abrams ordered the parties to choose between magistrate-judge consent and submitting materials seeking FLSA settlement approval.
The five named plaintiffs, the defendant corporations and individual defendants, and potentially the other people represented by the plaintiffs’ collective or class allegations.
What happened
Rojas Martinez v. East Side Pizza Corp. is a Fair Labor Standards Act case in which the parties reported that they had settled in principle.
The court ordered the parties, by June 3, 2022, either to consent to having all further proceedings handled by Magistrate Judge Parker or to submit a joint letter explaining why the settlement was fair and reasonable, along with supporting materials including billing records for attorney fees and costs. The court did not approve the settlement in this order.
Judge Ronnie Abrams also advised that materials relied on in deciding whether the settlement was fair would be publicly docketed and identified settlement terms the court would not approve, including broad waivers of unrelated claims and bans on negative statements without an exception for truthful statements about the plaintiffs’ litigation experience.
The detailed version
- Rojas Martinez v. East Side Pizza Corp. · No. 1:21-cv-05335
- Ronnie Abrams
- May 6, 2022
Background
Alejandro Rojas Martinez, Asuncion Albino Castillo, Braulio Moreno Flores, Antonio Quirino Ruiz, and Obed Domniguez Garcia brought this Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) case individually and on behalf of others similarly situated against East Side Pizza Corp., doing business as La Mia Pizza; Perfecto Pizzeria Corp., doing business as Lunetta Pizza; Midtown Pizza Corp., doing business as La Vera Pizza; 52 St Pizza Corp., doing business as Little Roma; Richard Attia; Hesham M. Attia; Abdellatif Mahmoud; and Khair Muhana. The opinion states that the parties reported the case had been settled in principle.
Order
The court directed the parties to take one of two actions by June 3, 2022:
1. Consent to conducting all further proceedings before Magistrate Judge Parker by completing the required consent form. The court stated that choosing not to proceed before Judge Parker would not have adverse substantive consequences. 2. Submit a joint letter explaining why the settlement was fair and reasonable and should be approved, together with supporting materials, including contemporaneous billing records for attorney fees and costs provided for in the settlement.
The court advised that materials on which it relied in making its fairness determination would be placed on the public docket because judicial documents are generally subject to public access.
The court also stated that it would not approve settlement agreements in which the plaintiffs waived practically any possible claim against the defendants, including unknown claims or claims unrelated to wage-and-hour issues. It further stated that it would not approve agreements barring the plaintiffs from making negative statements about the defendants unless the agreement included an exception for truthful statements about the plaintiffs’ experience litigating the case.
Disposition and Classification
This order directed the parties to select a procedure for continuing toward settlement approval; it did not itself approve or reject the reported settlement. The order is classified as a procedural order because it concerns settlement administration and approval rather than deciding the underlying FLSA claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.