Carcamo v. Tacos el Poblanito Inc. et al

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
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EDUARDO CARCAMO,
Plaintiff,
- against -
TACOS EL POBLANITO, INC. and DANIEL
BARRIOS CASTILLO
Defendants.
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MEMORANDUM DECISION
AND ORDER
25-cv-5339 (BMC)
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COGAN, District Judge.
In this putative collective action, plaintiff brings claims against his former employers for
unpaid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and New York Labor Law
(“NYLL”), as well as unpaid minimum wages, unpaid spread-of-hours wages, failure to furnish
wage statements, and failure to furnish a wage notice under the NYLL. The Court directed
plaintiff to file a letter explaining why it should not dismiss Count V, failure to furnish wage
statements under NYLL § 195(3), and Count VI, failure to furnish wage notices under NYLL §
195(1), for lack of standing, and referred plaintiff to this Court’s prior ruling in Deng v.
Frequency Elecs., Inc., 640 F. Supp. 3d 255 (E.D.N.Y. 2022).
NYLL § 195(1) requires employers to provide new employees a wage notice at the time
of hiring that sets forth the employee’s rate of pay and allowances, as well as various other
information relating to the computation of the employee’s pay. Section 195(3) requires
employers to provide, for each pay period, a wage statement showing how that pay was
computed, including deductions and allowances. The NYLL provides for statutory damages of
up to $10,000 for failure to provide a wage notice and wage statements. N.Y. Lab. L.
§ 198(1)(b), (d).
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In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021), the Supreme Court clarified that
Article III standing does not exist simply because a technical violation triggers a statutory
damage award; the plaintiff must still demonstrate an actual and concrete injury. It is
well-settled that this principle applies to wage notice and statement claims under NYLL § 195.
See Guthrie v. Rainbow Fencing, Inc., 113 F.4th 300, 305 (2d Cir. 2024). Although the New
York state legislature, in adopting § 195 as part of New York’s Wage Theft Prevention Act,
“may have intended to empower employees to advocate for themselves,” that possible inference
of legislative purpose is not enough to establish an injury for mere violation of the statute. Id. at
308. Accordingly, “a plaintiff must show some causal connection between the lack of accurate
notices and the downstream harm.” Id.
In the instant case, the complaint alleges that plaintiff did not receive a wage notice or
any wage statements, which “deprived [him] of the ability to know exactly how much
compensation he was entitled to receive and resulted in the underpayment of wages as asserted
herein.” Plaintiff contends that in accordance with the Second Circuit’s decision in Guthrie, he
“has identified a concrete downstream harm as a result of the statutory violations: the
underpayment of wages and the lost time-value of money.” This Court disagrees.
The harm that plaintiff allegedly suffered is simply the harm that the statute seeks to
prevent: wage theft. Guthrie plainly rejected this theory of standing as “inconsistent with
TransUnion.” Id. at 307-08. Further, as Guthrie later explains:
A plaintiff-employee may have suffered an injury-in-fact sufficient to establish
standing when, for example, inaccurate or noncompliant notices prevented the
employee from obtaining full payment of wages in a timely fashion. But the
plaintiff-employee cannot “assume this conclusion without analysis” or rely on
“speculation and conjecture.” Quieju v. La Jugueria Inc., No. 23-cv-264, 2023
WL 3073518, at *2 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 25, 2023)). Rather, the plaintiff-employee
must support a plausible “theory as to how he was injured by the defendants’
failure to provide the required documents.”
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Id. at 309 (cleaned up). The problem with plaintiff’s allegations is that any plaintiff bringing
wage notice and statement claims could allege the same. There is nothing about plaintiff’s
allegations linking any legally cognizable injury that plaintiff personally experienced to his
employers’ failure to provide a wage notice and wage statements under the NYLL.1 See Perez v.
E.P.E. Enter. Corp., No. 22-cv-6353, 2024 WL 1632255, at *5 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 15, 2024), report
and recommendation adopted (E.D.N.Y. June 10, 2024).
Although the failure to provide wage notices and statements “may result in various harms
to an employee,” plaintiff “has not plausibly alleged that [defendants’] failure to provide the
wage notices and wage statements in this case caused him to suffer any of those harms.”
Guthrie, 113 F.4th at 310. Plaintiff therefore lacks standing to bring his § 195 claims, which
means that the Court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over those claims. See Deng, 640
F. Supp. 3d at 267 (citing TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 417 (“No concrete harm, no standing.”)).
Plaintiff’s wage notice and statement claims, Counts V and VI, are thus dismissed without
prejudice to recommencement in state court where there is no Article III standing requirement.
Id.; see also Cent. States Se. & Sw. Areas Health & Welfare Fund v Merck-Medco Managed
1 Plaintiff argues that his allegations are analogous to those “that the Guthrie panel cited approvingly” in footnote 4
of its decision. Guthrie notes a range of district court decisions – approving or rejecting some and neutrally noting
others. The cases cited in footnote 4 are merely noted, not approved or even rejected, as cases that “have concluded
that plaintiffs adequately alleged that the lack of accurate notices caused a downstream harm.” Guthrie, 113 F.4th at
308 n.4. By contrast, Guthrie approves this Court’s reasoning from Quieju that “the plaintiff-employee must
support a plausible ‘theory as to how he was injured by [the] defendants’ failure to provide the required
documents.’” See Guthrie, 113 F.4th at 309 (quoting Quieju, 2023 WL 3073518, at *2). That reasoning guides the
Court’s decision in this case.
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Care, L.L.C., 433 F. 3d 181, 198 (2d Cir. 2005) (“Because the standing issue goes to this Court’s
subject matter jurisdiction, it can be raised sua sponte.”).
SO ORDERED.
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U.S.D.J.
Dated: Brooklyn, New York
February 18, 2026
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