Key Points

  • The Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed a Supreme Court, New York County, order granting class certification in a prevailing-wage suit against Dragonetti Brothers Landscaping Nursery & Florist, Inc.
  • The court held that worker affirmations showing systematic nonpayment of prevailing wages and supplemental benefits for tree pruning, cutting, chipping and related construction-like work on public works projects established that common questions predominated.
  • The defendants' argument that each worker's tasks required an individualized determination of whether the work was construction-like did not defeat commonality at the certification stage, and the court pointed to contract terms contemplating aerial lifts, chainsaws, debris removal and work zone safety operations.
  • Differences in job duties and project assignments did not bar class treatment of claims that the defendants systematically failed to pay the prevailing wage, the court held, citing Stanton v Dragonetti Bros., 238 AD3d 578.
  • About 40 identified coworkers satisfied numerosity, far exceeding the classes of as few as 18 members that the legislature contemplated, according to Borden v 400 E. 55th Assoc.

A New York appeals court on Oct. 20 upheld class certification for landscaping workers who allege that Dragonetti Brothers Landscaping Nursery & Florist, Inc. failed to pay them prevailing wages for tree pruning, cutting and chipping on public works projects.

The Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed a Sept. 18, 2025, order of Justice Kathleen Waterman-Marshall of Supreme Court, New York County. Justice Waterman-Marshall had granted plaintiff Jesse Stabile's motion to certify the class. The five-justice panel of Justices Webber, Kennedy, Gesmer, Michael and Chan, with Webber presiding, issued an unsigned decision and awarded costs on the appeal.

The ruling lets the workers press their claims as a group rather than one by one. The panel rejected the company's argument that each worker's duties had to be examined individually to decide whether the work counted as construction-like labor. That dispute, the court held, "does not defeat commonality at the class-certification stage."

The panel's analysis, which cited CPLR 901(a), addressed two questions: whether common questions predominated and whether the class was numerous enough.

"Supreme Court providently exercised its discretion in granting class certification," the panel wrote, citing the Court of Appeals' 2014 decision in Borden v 400 E. 55th Assoc., L.P. The appellate court relied on affirmations from workers. "The worker affirmations submitted in support of the motion sufficiently demonstrated that common questions of law and fact predominated," the court held.

According to the decision, the affirmations showed that the defendants "systematically failed to pay prevailing wages and supplemental benefits to landscaping employees who were performing tree pruning, cutting, chipping, and related construction-like work on public works projects."

The case has been before the First Department already. The panel noted that the court "has already held that the allegations in the complaint adequately stated causes of action for breach of contract on behalf of a class consisting of individuals performing those tasks." That earlier ruling in the same case was published in 2025 at 238 AD3d 577.

On this appeal, Dragonetti Brothers and its co-defendants argued that landscaping work requires "individualized, worker-specific determinations as to whether the work involved construction-like labor." The workers' claims, as the decision describes them, concern tree work that is construction-like.

The panel found support for resolving that question on a class-wide basis in the contract itself. The contract "contemplated work involving aerial lifts, chainsaws, debris removal, and work zone safety operations," the court wrote, citing the Court of Appeals' 2013 decision in De La Cruz v Caddell Dry Dock & Repair Co., Inc.

The court also held that variation among the workers did not bar a class. "Differences in job duties and project assignments do not bar class treatment where, as here, plaintiffs' claims that defendants systematically failed to pay the prevailing wage are 'particularly appropriate for class certification,'" the panel wrote.

The quoted phrase came from Stanton v Dragonetti Bros. Landscaping Nursery & Florist Inc., a separate 2025 First Department decision in a suit against the same company, reported at 238 AD3d 578. The panel also cited its 2024 decision in Chua v Trim-Line Hitech Constr. Corp.

The workers also satisfied the numerosity requirement. "The worker affidavits in this action identified around 40 relevant coworkers, far exceeding the number that the legislature contemplated as sufficient for a class action," the court wrote.

For that benchmark, the panel again cited Borden, noting that the legislature had contemplated classes involving as few as 18 members. The court also cited its 2022 decision in Hoffman v Fort 709 Assoc., L.P., in which the certified class consisted of tenants of 16 apartments.

The decision addresses only the certification order. The panel did not decide whether the workers were owed prevailing wages or whether the company breached its contract.

Lawyers for the defendants included Adam C. Weiss of The Law Firm of Adam C. Weiss, PLLC, in Glen Cove. Stabile was represented by James Emmet Murphy of Virginia & Ambinder, LLP, in New York.

A notice on the decision from the state's Law Reporting Bureau states that it is "uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports."