Joaquin v. New York Athletic Club

Background

The opinion concerns a discovery dispute in a wage-and-hour case. The plaintiffs are servers employed by the New York Athletic Club who perform waiter and bartender duties at banquet events. The Club charges customers an automatic service fee based on food and beverage sales and distributes the entire fee through a tip pool to servers, barbacks, and captains who work the event.

The plaintiffs allege that barbacks and at least one captain unlawfully participated in the tip pool, reducing the plaintiffs’ distributions. The defendants deny that the participation was unlawful. The plaintiffs sought discovery of the automatic service fees charged for each event. The related customer invoices also contain food, beverage, and special-service prices, as well as customer names and contact information.

Parties’ Positions

The defendants did not oppose producing the automatic service-fee amounts. They sought a protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c), which allows a court, for good cause, to protect parties or other people from harms such as annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden. Their proposed edits would allow customer prices and customer names and contact information to be designated confidential, require redacted versions of documents containing partly confidential material, and restrict use of customer contact information to contact customers unless the court granted permission based on substantial need and just cause.

The defendants argued that the Club’s prices and customer information were not publicly available and that disclosure could harm the Club’s competitive position or invade customers’ privacy. They also argued that the plaintiffs had not shown a legitimate need to contact customers.

The plaintiffs opposed the proposed edits. They argued that the customer names and contact information and the pricing information were not legally protected confidential or trade-secret information. They also argued that the proposed restriction could operate as a permanent non-solicitation or non-compete agreement and could interfere with future employment or business opportunities. The plaintiffs further argued that information filed in support of summary judgment could become subject to public-access rights.

Ruling

The court granted the parties’ request for a pre-motion conference concerning the discovery dispute. It scheduled a teleconference for December 21, 2023, at 10:00 a.m., directed the parties to comply with the court’s individual rules, and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion pending at docket entry 37.

The court did not issue the proposed protective order in this text, decide whether the challenged information was confidential, or resolve the underlying tip-pooling claims. The ruling was therefore an administrative step concerning a discovery dispute rather than a decision on the merits.

Judge-Identification Note

The supplied case metadata identifies Gabriel Gorenstein as the judge. The opinion text, however, addresses the letter to District Judge Gregory H. Woods, and the docket number ends in “GHW.” The text does not clearly identify the judge who entered the endorsement. This summary uses the judge supplied in the metadata.