Keawsri v. Ramen-ya Inc.

Background

The plaintiffs were former employees of Ramen-Ya Inc. and Y&S International Corp., doing business as Ramen-Ya. They asserted claims for unpaid wages and overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law, as well as claims involving withheld tips, spread-of-hours payments, and incomplete or inaccurate pay statements.

Before this opinion, the court had granted the plaintiffs summary judgment against Ramen-Ya Inc., Miho Maki, Masahiko Negita, Y&S International Corp., and Kenji Kora, finding that they were employers under the federal and New York wage laws and jointly and severally liable for the plaintiffs’ damages and other recoverable amounts. After a bench trial, the court also found Yasuko Negita to be an employer and jointly and severally liable with the other defendants. The claims against Toshihito Kobayashi had been dismissed after the plaintiffs elected not to proceed to trial against him.

The parties agreed that the court would determine the judgment amount from written submissions. The plaintiffs requested $687,825.81 in damages and penalties and $1,181,710.45 in attorneys’ fees and costs. The defendants did not object to the plaintiffs’ calculations for unpaid wages, overtime, withheld tips, spread-of-hours payments, or pay-statement penalties. They did object to including 2014 federal-law damages, awarding both federal liquidated damages and prejudgment interest, awarding liquidated damages, the requested attorneys’ fees, and several categories of costs.

Court’s analysis

The court rejected the challenge to including 2014 in the award. It explained that its earlier summary-judgment ruling had already determined that the relevant defendants were covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act under an enterprise theory for conduct dating to 2014. The court also stated that the two restaurants’ sales could be aggregated because it had previously found that they operated as a single integrated enterprise. In addition, the New York Labor Law did not require a minimum level of annual sales, so coverage under federal law was not necessary for the plaintiffs to recover under New York law for that period.

The court agreed that the plaintiffs could not receive both federal liquidated damages and federal prejudgment interest because both serve a compensatory purpose. But it held that prejudgment interest could be awarded under New York law in addition to New York liquidated damages because New York liquidated damages are punitive. The court awarded simple interest at 9 percent on unpaid wages, withheld tips, unpaid overtime, and spread-of-hours payments, beginning at the midpoint of each plaintiff’s employment period. It did not apply that interest to liquidated damages or statutory penalties.

The court also rejected the defendants’ challenge to liquidated damages. It stated that the earlier summary-judgment ruling had already found liquidated damages warranted under both the federal and New York wage laws, and the defendants had not shown a compelling reason to revisit that ruling.

For attorneys’ fees, the court used the lodestar method, meaning a reasonable hourly rate multiplied by a reasonable number of hours. It found the requested $450 hourly rate reasonable for the plaintiffs’ lawyers, each of whom had more than a decade of relevant experience. However, it found some billed time excessive, including full-rate travel time, preparation for certain conferences and trial, and the use of three attorneys at trial. The court therefore reduced the total hours by 6 percent.

The court rejected the defendants’ objections to the requested costs, including costs for trial transcripts, transportation, translators, legal research, depositions, and preparing binders. It found those costs reasonable and commonly reimbursed in similar cases. The court declined to consider requests first raised in a reply submission for wire-transfer payments, tax and Social Security receipts, and a sworn affidavit, stating that the plaintiffs could raise those requests later after the defendants had an opportunity to respond.

Disposition

The court directed the Clerk to prepare a judgment awarding $687,825.81 in damages and penalties to the plaintiffs and $1,110,807.82 in attorneys’ fees and costs to plaintiffs’ counsel, plus any post-judgment interest. The court directed the Clerk to close the motion docket entry, Dkt. No. 499.