Juarez v. Pizza Friendly Pizza NYC, LLC
- Lewis Liman
- 1:22-cv-08385
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Juarez v. Pizza Friendly Pizza NYC, LLC, Judge Liman required settlement-approval materials and scheduled a hearing before considering the requested dismissal.
The plaintiff, the defendants, the plaintiff’s counsel regarding any requested attorney-fee award, and the similarly situated persons represented in the case are affected by the required settlement review and hearing. The order did not yet approve the settlement or dismiss the case.
What happened
In Juarez v. Pizza Friendly Pizza NYC, LLC, the parties asked the court to dismiss the Fair Labor Standards Act case with prejudice as part of a settlement. The court said such settlements must be reviewed for fairness under current Second Circuit law.
The court ordered the parties to submit a joint letter by March 14, 2023, explaining why the proposed settlement was fair and reasonable. The letter must address any confidentiality, non-disparagement, or release terms and provide supporting records for any requested attorney-fee award.
The court scheduled a telephone settlement-approval hearing for April 3, 2023. Judge Lewis J. Liman did not approve the settlement or dismiss the case in this order; he also said the hearing could be canceled if there was no settlement agreement.
The detailed version
- Juarez v. Pizza Friendly Pizza NYC, LLC · No. 1:22-cv-08385
- Lewis Liman
- Feb. 14, 2023
Background
Mauro Juarez brought this case on behalf of himself and other similarly situated persons under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal wage-and-hour law. Pizza Friendly Pizza NYC, LLC, and the other defendants were named as defendants. The parties asked the court to dismiss the case with prejudice based on a proposed settlement.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that, under current law in the Second Circuit, a stipulated dismissal settling Fair Labor Standards Act claims with prejudice must be reviewed to ensure that the settlement is fair. The court directed the parties to explain the basis for the proposed settlement and why it should be approved as fair and reasonable, using the factors identified in Wolinsky v. Scholastic, Inc.
The court required the parties’ joint letter to address any confidentiality provisions, non-disparagement provisions, and releases in the proposed settlement agreement. If the settlement included an attorney-fee award for the plaintiff’s counsel, the parties also had to address that award and provide supporting documentation when appropriate. The court stated that merely identifying the requested fee as a proportion of the settlement amount was insufficient. It said the reasonableness of fees should ordinarily be supported by contemporaneous time records showing, for each attorney, the date, hours spent, and nature of the work. Insufficient documentation could lead the court to reject the proposed fee award.
Order and effect
The court ordered the parties to submit the joint letter by March 14, 2023, and directed them to appear by telephone for a settlement-approval hearing on April 3, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. The plaintiff was directed to attend and, if necessary, to do so with an interpreter. The court stated that the hearing would be canceled if the parties reported that they had no settlement agreement. Judge Lewis J. Liman did not approve the settlement or dismiss the case in this order; the order required further submissions and a hearing before the court considered the requested dismissal.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.