Kasseris v. ZA & D Service Station, Inc. et al

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
PANAGIOTIS KASSERIS,
Plaintiff,
– against –
ZA & D SERVICE STATION, INC.;
ANTHONY KOULIZAKIS,
Defendants.
ORDER
23-cv-06281 (NCM) (SDE)
NATASHA C. MERLE, United States District Judge:
Before the Court is defendants’ motion for reconsideration of the Court’s February
23, 2026 Order (“Order”) finding that plaintiff has established Article III standing for his
wage statement and wage notice claims pursuant to New York Labor Law (“NYLL”) § 195.
See Mem. of Law in Supp. of Mot. for Reconsideration (“Motion”), ECF No. 59. For the
reasons that follow, defendants’ Motion is DENIED.
The “major grounds” warranting reconsideration of an order or judgment include
an “intervening change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence, or the need to
correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice.” Commerzbank AG v. U.S. Bank, N.A.,
100 F.4th 362, 377 (2d Cir. 2024).1 A motion for reconsideration “is an extraordinary
request that is granted only in rare circumstances[.]” Van Buskirk v. United Grp. of Cos.,
935 F.3d 49, 54 (2d Cir. 2019). Thus, such a motion will be denied “unless the moving
party can point to controlling decisions or data that the court overlooked—matters, in
other words, that might reasonably be expected to alter the conclusion reached by the
1 	Throughout this Order, the Court omits all internal quotation marks, footnotes,
and citations, and adopts all alterations, unless otherwise indicated.
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court.” Shrader v. CSX Transp., Inc., 70 F.3d 255, 257 (2d Cir. 1995). Moreover, the
purpose of a motion for reconsideration is not to make new arguments that could have
previously been raised. See Brown v. City of New York, 622 F. App’x 19, 19–20 (2d Cir.
2015) (summary order).
Defendants 	plainly 	fall 	short 	of 	meeting 	the 	requisite 	burden 	here. 	First,
defendants seek reconsideration of the Court’s resolution of an issue it raised sua sponte.
See Mem. & Order 36–40, ECF No. 52.2 Indeed, in lieu of advancing the arguments
defendants now press concerning plaintiff’s lack of Article III standing, defendants
instead devoted six pages of their opening brief for summary judgment to the separate
issue of seeking sanctions for opposing counsel’s conduct. See Mem. of Law in Supp. of
Mot. for Summ. J., 16–21, ECF No. 49. Moreover, even after the Court raised the issue
and plaintiff belatedly responded to the Court’s Order to Show Cause, defendants’ initial
response was devoid of substantive legal arguments challenging plaintiff’s standing. See
Defs.’ Letter dated Feb. 13, 2026, ECF No. 57. The extent of defendants’ argument was as
follows: “The Court is asked to not allow such late and prejudicial filings—particularly as
the claims were not properly pleaded, nor supported and no opposition was filed
regarding the dismissal of such claims as stated by the Court.” See Defs.’ Letter dated Feb.
13, 2026 at 1. Defendants now attempt to raise new arguments through the vehicle of a
motion for reconsideration—this alone merits denial of their motion. See Nicholas v.
Bratton, No. 15-cv-09592, 2019 WL 2223407, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. May 23, 2019) (“[A] party’s
attempt to raise new arguments on reconsideration is itself sufficient to warrant rejecting
them.”); In re Furstenberg Fin. SAS, 785 F. App’x 882, 886 (2d Cir. 2019) (summary
2 	Throughout this Order, page numbers for docket filings refer to the page numbers
assigned in ECF filing headers.
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order) (“[A] party may not advance new arguments or requests for relief in a motion for
reconsideration if they were not previously presented to the Court[.]”).
However, even if the Court were to consider defendants’ belated and conclusory
arguments, none of them warrant reconsideration of the Court’s Order. Defendants do
not point to any controlling decisions that would have changed the Court’s decision, an
intervening change in controlling law, new evidence, or the need to correct clear error or
prevent 	manifest 	injustice. 	Instead, 	defendants’ 	arguments 	simply 	amount 	to
disagreement with the Court’s conclusion, which is “not a basis for reconsideration.”
Becnel v. Deutsche Bank AG, 838 F. Supp. 2d 168, 171 n.16 (S.D.N.Y. 2011). For instance,
defendants incorrectly suggest that the Court misinterpreted the Second Circuit’s decision
in Guthrie v. Rainbow Fencing, Inc., 113 F.4th 300 (2d Cir. 2024) to “dispense” with the
requirement set forth in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021), that an
“alleged injury be concrete and supported by evidence at the state of litigation in which it
is asserted.” Mot. 7. This is of course inaccurate. As the Court explained in its order on
defendants’ motion for summary judgment: “a plaintiff seeking to maintain wage notice
and wage statement claims under the NYLL must adequately show a concrete injury-in-
fact resulting from the failure to provide the wage notices and wage statements.
Accordingly, a plaintiff must show a downstream harm.” Mem. & Order 37. And thus,
upon review of plaintiff’s supplementary allegations, the Court found that plaintiff’s
testimony that “if he had the wage statements he would have confronted the defendants
sooner and more often” and “would have advocated for the proper payment of his wages
more,” and accordingly, “likely would have been paid because he had clear proof of the
time he worked,” was sufficient to show at the summary judgment stage a downstream,
concrete, and particularized injury. See Order (quoting Kasseris Decl. ¶¶ 14–15, ECF No.
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55-1); see Zambrano v. Envios Espinoza, Inc., No. 22-cv-03031, 2025 WL 1808694, at
*13 (E.D.N.Y. July 1, 2025) (finding that the plaintiffs established standing at summary
judgment stage because they identified that the “[d]efendants’ failure to provide [the]
[p]laintiffs with [wage] information caused [the] [p]laintiffs to endure uncertainty
regarding their wages and prevented them from taking action to correct the [d]efendants’
wage and hour violations as [the] [p]laintiffs had no means to confirm that they were
being compensated in accordance with the terms of their employment”); see also Sanchez
v. Clipper Realty, Inc., No. 21-cv-08502, 2026 WL 496555, at *21 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 23,
2026) (granting the plaintiffs summary judgment and finding their declarations that the
“[d]efendants’ violations impaired their ability to seek relief due to a lack of information,”
was adequate to “establish[] actual and concrete downstream harm as a result of [the]
[d]efendants’ 	failure 	to 	provide 	the 	required 	wage 	and 	hour 	notices 	and 	wage
statements”).
For similar reasons, defendants’ argument that plaintiff presents “hypothetical”
and “speculative” statements that do not satisfy the summary judgment burden is
misguided. See Mot. 5, 7. In his declaration, plaintiff—under penalty of perjury—attests
that he would have undertaken advocacy on his own behalf to recover unpaid wages had
defendants provided wage statements and notices as required by law, see Kasseris Decl.
¶ 14, and that the lack of such statements and notices prevented him from doing so, see
Kasseris Decl. ¶ 17 (“The fact that I only speak Greek made it more difficult to explain to
attorneys what was happening to me[.] The lack of wage notices made it difficult for me
to retain counsel and explain my situation to attorneys[.]”). Thus, contrary to defendants’
argument, plaintiff does in fact present “competent evidence at the summary judgment
stage,” Mot. 7, to establish standing, see Charles v. Pinnacle Too, LLC, No. 22-cv-04232,
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2024 WL 4491560, at *15 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 15, 2024) (“To survive summary judgment,
potential plaintiffs would likely need to submit sufficient affidavits or provide credible
testimony 	that 	the 	failure 	to 	provide 	wage 	statements 	and 	wage 	notices 	caused
downstream harm because the lack of such statements led to lost wages.”); cf. Lorenzo v.
Dee Mark Inc., No. 23-cv-00048, 2026 WL 494070, at *11 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 23, 2026)
(“[The] [p]laintiff submits no affidavit and points to no evidence to demonstrate that [the]
[d]efendants’ failure to provide compliant wage notices and wage statements led to
concrete harm in the form of lost wages or otherwise.”).
To the extent defendants believe plaintiff’s testimony to be incredible or there is
evidence in the record that contradicts plaintiff’s assertions, this raises, at most, an issue
of fact for trial. It does not merit granting the extraordinary request of a motion for
reconsideration. See Toxqui v. R&P Pizza Corp., No. 24-cv-03339, 2025 WL 2430569, at
*10 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 22, 2025) (concluding that “[w]hether [the plaintiff] has standing to
pursue [wage notice and statement] claim[s] is an outstanding material fact to be
ascertained at trial,” where the plaintiffs’ 56.1 statement asserted that “they were harmed
by the lack of notice in that they were effectively denied the opportunity to accurately
calculate and check that the wages they were being paid were lawful”); Martinenko v. 212
Steakhhouse, Inc., No. 22-cv-00518, 2024 WL 4275286, at *10 (S.D.N.Y. Sep. 24, 2024)
(finding that issues of fact precluded summary judgment on wage notice and statement
claims where “[t]he parties offer[ed] competing evidence as to whether [the plaintiff] in
fact would have undertaken . . . advocacy if accurate notices had been provided”); accord
Miller v. Lamanna, --- F.4th ---, No. 24-cv-2314, 2026 WL 643744, at *6 (2d Cir. Mar. 9,
2026) (“[T]he risk of error was compounded because [the] defendants did not object to
the adequacy of [the plaintiff’s] pleadings until the summary judgment stage. Had [the]
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defendants objected earlier, [the plaintiff’s] complaint presumably could have been
cured[.]”).
CONCLUSION
Accordingly, for the foregoing reasons, defendants’ motion for reconsideration is
DENIED. Additionally, defendants’ request in the alternative for the Court to certify the
standing issue for interlocutory appeal, Reply Mem. of Law in Supp. of Mot. 7–9, ECF No.
68, is DENIED. See Masri v. Liebowitz, No. 24-cv-01284, 2024 WL 3606233, at *2
(S.D.N.Y. July 29, 2024) (“The ultimate decision of whether to certify an interlocutory
appeal is entirely a matter of discretion for the district court.”); see also In re Roman
Catholic Diocese, 745 F.3d 30, 36 (2d Cir. 2014).
SO ORDERED.
/s/ Natasha C. Merle
NATASHA C. MERLE
United States District Judge
Dated: March 20, 2026
Brooklyn, New York
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