Simmons v. Trans Express Inc.Simmons v. Trans Express Inc.
AFFIRMED.
RICHARD J. SULLIVAN, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff-Appellant Charlene Simmons sued Defendant-Appellee Trans Express Inc. under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA“),
I. BACKGROUND
The facts and initial procedural history of this case are set forth in our first opinion in this appeal, so we recount them only as relevant here. See Simmons I, 955 F.3d at 326–28.
On October 24, 2018, Simmons filed the instant federal action, alleging her entitlement to unpaid overtime wages and to additional compensation because Trans Express failed to furnish her with certain notices of her rights, as required by the NYLL. Citing the preclusive effect of the small claims court judgment, the district court dismissed Simmons‘s subsequent federal complaint. Simmons raised several arguments on appeal, principally contending that New York City Civil Court Act § 1808 (“Section 1808“), which governs the preclusive effect of judgments rendered by a small claims court, provides that such judgments are non-preclusive. Section 1808 provides:
A judgment obtained under this article shall not be deemed an adjudication of any fact at issue or found therein in any other action or court; except that a subsequent judgment obtained in another action or court involving the same facts, issues and parties shall be reduced by the amount of a judgment awarded under this article.
Under New York City Civil Court Act § 1808, what issue preclusion, claim preclusion, and/or res judicata effects, if any, does a small claims court‘s prior judgment have on subsequent actions brought in other courts involving the same facts, issues, and/or parties? In particular, where a small claims court has rendered a judgment on a claim, does Section 1808 preclude a subsequent action involving a claim arising from the same transaction, occurrence, or employment relationship?
The New York Court of Appeals accepted certification and ultimately held that although “[S]ection 1808 abrogates . . . the common-law issue preclusive effect of small claims judgments,” ordinary rules of claim preclusion apply to the judgments of the small claims court. Simmons II, 37 N.Y.3d at 114–15 & 115 n.3 (explaining that Section 1808 does not “replace traditional claim preclusion analysis with a narrower form of the doctrine“). The Court of Appeals then left to
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review the dismissal of a complaint and the application of claim preclusion de novo. Simmons I, 955 F.3d at 328 (quoting TechnoMarine SA v. Giftports, Inc., 758 F.3d 493, 498 (2d Cir. 2014)).
III. DISCUSSION
“Under the doctrine of res judicata, or claim preclusion, ‘[a] final judgment on the merits of an action precludes the parties or their privies from relitigating issues that were or could have been raised in that action.‘” St. Pierre v. Dyer, 208 F.3d 394, 399 (2d Cir. 2000) (quoting Federated Dep‘t Stores, Inc. v. Moitie, 452 U.S. 394, 398 (1981)). New York law determines the preclusive effect of the judgment of the small claims court. See Migra v. Warren Cty. Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 465 U.S. 75, 81 (1984) (“[A] federal court must give to a state-court judgment the same preclusive effect as would be given that judgment under the law of the State in which the judgment was rendered.“). New York employs a “transactional” approach to claim preclusion, under which “the claim preclusion rule extends beyond attempts to relitigate identical claims . . . [to] all other claims arising out of
Before conducting the transactional analysis, however, we first address a threshold issue concerning whether the district court prematurely dismissed Simmons‘s complaint. Simmons argues that claim preclusion is an affirmative defense that may not form the basis for dismissal on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion unless all the elements of the defense are apparent from the face of the pleading. But “in ruling on a 12(b) motion to dismiss,” the district court was also permitted to “consider matters of which judicial notice may be taken.” Staehr v. Hartford Fin. Servs. Grp., Inc., 547 F.3d 406, 425 (2d Cir. 2008) (citation omitted). This includes the summons and the judgment sheet in Simmons‘s prior small claims case. See Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Rotches Pork Packers, Inc., 969 F.2d 1384, 1388 (2d Cir. 1992)
A. The “Transactional” Approach
Applying the principles of New York‘s transactional approach, we hold that Simmons‘s federal claims arise out of the same transaction as her small claims court suit and thus are barred. Simmons‘s federal complaint alleges that she is entitled to unpaid overtime wages. Her small claims suit raised substantially identical claims. Though Simmons attempts on appeal to recharacterize her small claims court suit as one for wrongful termination, the record belies that argument. The small claims court summons served on Trans Express advised that Simmons sought “to recover monies arising out of nonpayment of wages.” App‘x at 18 (capitalization altered). And the small claims court judgment awarded her $1,020
But even if we were to indulge Simmons‘s recharacterization of her small claims court action to one alleging wrongful discharge, her claim would still be precluded, since New York law casts a broad preclusive net in the employment context. Indeed, courts applying New York law have precluded subsequent claims when the first action charged defamation and the second alleged age discrimination, Bayer v. City of New York, 983 N.Y.S.2d 61, 63 (2d Dep‘t 2014), and when the first action asserted wrongful discharge and defamation and the second alleged discrimination based on national origin, Cieszkowska v. Gray Line N.Y., 295 F.3d 204, 205–06 (2d Cir. 2002). The distance between wrongful discharge and non-payment of overtime wages is not nearly so great as these other causes of
Simmons nevertheless argues that her small claims court judgment should not be given preclusive effect because the small claims court would not have had jurisdiction over all the claims brought in her federal action, since the damages she seeks here exceed the small claims court‘s $5,000 damages cap. But the highest New York judicial authority to pronounce on the matter has squarely rejected the argument that the small claims court‘s limited damages jurisdiction alters the preclusive effect of its judgments. See Chapman v. Faustin, 55 N.Y.S.3d 219, 220 (1st Dep‘t 2017). And it would be odd indeed if claim-preclusion restrictions could be defeated by a maneuver as elementary as pleading more than $5,000 worth of damages in the subsequent proceeding.1
B. Claim Preclusion and Federal and State Labor Law
Simmons‘s final attempt to avoid the preclusive effect of the small claims court‘s judgment is to argue that it does not matter where the transactional approach leads because, as a matter of law, claim preclusion may not be asserted as a defense to an FLSA or NYLL action. We declined to address this argument in our opinion certifying the Section 1808 question to the Court of Appeals, reasoning that “we [would not] need [to] . . . address that issue if the New York Court of Appeals determine[d] that Section 1808” renders limited the preclusive effect of a small claims court judgment. Simmons I, 955 F.3d at 331 n.2. In light of the Court of Appeals’ decision in Simmons II, we are now confronted squarely with that question and hold that neither the FLSA nor the NYLL forecloses the assertion of claim preclusion as a defense to such an action.
There can be no doubt that the FLSA‘s remedial scheme is extremely solicitous toward the rights of workers. We have, for instance, held that “parties cannot settle their FLSA claims through a private stipulated dismissal with prejudice” absent “approval of the district court or the Department of Labor.”
Nothing in the text of the statute indicates, or even suggests, that claim preclusion is unavailable as a defense to an FLSA action. We therefore reject the contention that the FLSA carries a blanket prohibition of such an affirmative defense. In doing so, we join a number of our sister Circuits that have reached similar conclusions when considering the effect of claim preclusion on wage-and-hour actions. See, e.g., Rangel v. PLS Check Cashers of Cal., Inc., 899 F.3d 1106, 1108 (9th Cir. 2018) (applying the typical “California law” of claim preclusion to reject the argument “that [an] FLSA action is excepted from the ordinary operation of res judicata“); see also Etherton v. Serv. First Logistics, Inc., 807 F. App‘x 469 (6th Cir. 2020) (applying claim preclusion to an FLSA claim); Sullivan v. DaVita Healthcare Partners, Inc., 780 F. App‘x 612, 615–17 (10th Cir. 2019) (same); McIntyre v. Ben E. Keith Co., 754 F. App‘x 262, 264–66 (5th Cir. 2018) (same).
Simmons does not attempt to argue that the statutory text of the FLSA bars the affirmative defense of claim preclusion, and the cases cited in her brief provide no support for that proposition. Instead, the cases she relies on involve situations in which courts have restricted employees from “waiv[ing]” certain rights under the FLSA and from “privately settl[ing]” certain FLSA disputes. See Cheeks, 796 F.3d at 203; see also Brooklyn Sav. Bank v. O‘Neil, 324 U.S. 697, 704 (1945) (discussing “waive[r] or release[]” of such rights). Claim preclusion implicates neither of those aspects of the FLSA, and we see no reason to graft atextual restrictions onto familiar legal doctrines merely because the case involves a wage-and-hour claim. See Mei Xing Yu, 944 F.3d at 410–12; see also Rodriguez-Depena v. Parts Auth., Inc., 877 F.3d 122, 123–24 (2d Cir. 2017) (holding that an FLSA defendant may compel arbitration under the same rules as any other defendant). We instead rely on the FLSA‘s text, the decisions of at least four other Circuits applying claim preclusion to FLSA claims, and the implications of this Circuit‘s own recent precedent to conclude that, as with Section 1808, the FLSA is no bar to applying claim preclusion in this case.
In sum, neither the FLSA nor the NYLL prevents the imposition of claim preclusion here.
IV. CONCLUSION
“The general rule” of claim preclusion is foundational to our legal system “because without it, an end could never be put to litigation.” San Remo Hotel, L.P. v. City and County of San Francisco, 545 U.S. 323, 336–37 (2005) (citation omitted). The Supreme Court has thus warned against treating claim preclusion as “a mere matter of practice or procedure inherited from a more technical time than ours.” Hart Steel Co. v. R.R. Supply Co., 244 U.S. 294, 299 (1917). Rather, “[i]t is a rule of fundamental and substantial justice, . . . which should be cordially regarded and enforced by the courts[.]” Id. (citation and quotation marks omitted). The New York Court of Appeals recognized as much when it held that the ordinary rules of claim preclusion apply even to small claims court judgments, and we see nothing in the language of the FLSA or the NYLL to suggest that Simmons‘s claims here are otherwise exempt from those rules. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the district court‘s dismissal of this action.