Fisher v. SD Protection Inc., No. 18-2504 (2d Cir. 2020)
Annotate this Case
When a district court concludes that a proposed settlement in a Fair Labor Standards Act case is unreasonable in whole or in part, it cannot simply rewrite the agreement, but it must instead reject the agreement or provide the parties an opportunity to revise.
The Second Circuit vacated the district court's approval of a settlement agreement in an FLSA case where the district court modified the agreement by increasing the portion of the settlement funds to be paid to plaintiff while reducing attorneysʹ fees and costs to be paid to his counsel. The court held that the district court abused its discretion in rewriting the settlement agreement by modifying the allotment of the settlement funds. Furthermore, the district court erred in concluding that the maximum fee percentage that plaintiff's counsel may retain in an FLSA suit is generally limited to 33% of the total settlement amount. Therefore, the panel remanded for further proceedings.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.