Diaz v. Parkash 1630 LLC
- Sarah Netburn
- 1:21-cv-08382
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In Diaz v. Parkash 1630 LLC, Judge Caproni denied collective certification because Diaz did not show similarly situated workers within the relevant period.
The ruling affected Delfino Adan Diaz’s effort to proceed with an FLSA collective action and the potential employees he sought to include. It also left the underlying wage claims and the defendants’ defenses to proceed subject to the court’s later case-management deadlines.
What happened
Delfino Adan Diaz sued Parkash 1630 LLC and Ved Parkash under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law, alleging that he worked long hours as an apartment-building superintendent without required overtime pay. He asked the court to notify and include other potentially affected superintendents in a wage collective action.
The court denied Diaz’s request for collective certification. It held that his statements about conversations with three other superintendents did not provide enough information about when those conversations occurred to show that the workers may have been affected by a common unlawful wage policy during the legally relevant period. The court did not decide whether Diaz’s overtime claim was legally valid.
Judge Valerie Caproni also denied as moot Diaz’s requests for the names and contact information of potential collective members, approval of a proposed notice, and an extension of the limitations period. The court set deadlines for fact and expert discovery and scheduled a post-discovery pretrial conference.
The detailed version
- Diaz v. Parkash 1630 LLC · No. 1:21-cv-08382
- Sarah Netburn
- Oct. 6, 2022
Background
Delfino Adan Diaz brought claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and New York Labor Law against Parkash 1630 LLC and Ved Parkash. The opinion states that Ved Parkash owns Parkash 1630 LLC. Defendants employed Diaz as an apartment-building superintendent from 2012 until June 2020. Diaz alleged that he worked from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. every day, or approximately 98 hours per week. He received a weekly salary and an apartment as part of his compensation. He alleged that defendants did not pay the required overtime premium for work beyond 40 hours per week.
Diaz sought conditional certification under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) of a collective consisting of current and former apartment-building superintendents, and similar employees, employed by the defendants from 2012 through the date of his motion.
Legal standard
The court explained that FLSA collective actions use a two-step process. At the notice stage, the plaintiff must make a modest factual showing that the plaintiff and potential opt-in employees may be similarly situated because they were victims of a common policy or plan that violated the law. The court does not decide at this stage whether an actual legal violation occurred. At a later stage, after a more developed factual record, the court determines whether the employees who joined the case are in fact similarly situated and subject to a common unlawful wage practice.
Court’s analysis
Diaz relied on conversations with three other superintendents, identified in his motion as Ediberto, Felix, and Jaime. He stated that they told him more than once that they routinely worked more than 40 hours per week without receiving overtime pay. Defendants submitted affidavits from Heriberto Andujar, Felix Tavarez, and Jaime Espiritu, whom Diaz acknowledged were the same individuals. The affidavits denied that the individuals worked more than 40 hours during the referenced period, although the affidavits did not define that period.
The court stated that factual conflicts generally should not be resolved at the notice stage and that the affidavits did not defeat Diaz’s motion based on those conflicts. But the court found that Diaz’s failure to provide details about when the conversations occurred was decisive. The FLSA generally allows claims from two years before filing, or three years for a willful violation, subject to equitable tolling. Because the complaint was filed on October 11, 2021, the proposed collective could include claims arising from October 11, 2019, or October 11, 2018, onward. Diaz had known the three individuals for many years, and the opinion stated that it was impossible to determine whether their conversations occurred during the relevant two- or three-year period.
The court also stated that deposition testimony about superintendents receiving extra compensation for particular projects did not establish that the extra compensation replaced overtime pay or that the projects caused the superintendents to work more than 40 hours in a week. The court therefore concluded that Diaz had not shown that a group of employees may have been affected by a common unlawful wage policy during the three years before the case was filed.
Disposition and case management
The court denied Diaz’s motion for collective certification and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion at docket entry 27. The court denied as moot Diaz’s requests for discovery of potential collective members’ names and contact information, approval of the proposed notice, and tolling of the limitations period.
The court ordered fact discovery completed by January 6, 2023, and expert discovery completed by January 20, 2023. It scheduled a post-discovery pretrial conference for January 13, 2023, and required the parties to submit a joint status letter by January 5, 2023.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.