Hannaford's Manager Overtime Settlement Is $8,875,000. Notice Went to 1,296 Managers and 456 Signed the Form — and for Those Who Did Not, the Court Says Cashing the Check Is the Consent Form.

The document is five pages and it is on the public docket: Document 109, Final Approval Order, filed August 27, 2026 in Case 2:24-cv-00339-LEW. The caption lists four plaintiffs — Tasha Vye, DestinyLynn Sortino, Michael Scott and Cassandra Baker — “Individually and on Behalf of All Other Persons Similarly Situated,” against Hannaford Bros. Co., LLC.

The court held the Final Fairness Hearing on August 25, 2026 and concluded the agreement “to be fair, reasonable and adequate, in the best interests of the Rule 23 Class Members and the FLSA Collective Members, and the result of arm's length negotiation by experienced counsel following sufficient discovery.” In the same paragraph it approves the allocation method against a figure stated once and exactly: the “Gross Settlement Amount of $8,875,000 (as defined in the Agreement).”

A separate one-page Judgment of Dismissal went in the same day, signed out by Deputy Clerk Stacey Graf for Clerk Jennifer P. Lyons. The case is dismissed with prejudice.

Federal wage-and-hour cases do not work like consumer class actions. A Rule 23 class sweeps you in unless you actively leave. A collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act does the opposite: you are out unless you file a written consent. That difference is what the participation numbers in this order are about.

The order records the sequence. “The Court previously granted conditional certification of the FLSA Collective on September 15, 2025 (ECF No. 56). Notice was sent to 1,296 individuals, of whom 456 individuals filed Consent to Join forms in the case.”

One thousand two hundred and ninety-six letters. Four hundred and fifty-six signatures. 840 people received notice of a live federal overtime case naming their employer and did not return the form. The order does not say why, and neither will we.

Here is the paragraph worth the reading time. Immediately after the participation numbers, the order continues:

In addition to those FLSA Collective Members who joined the case, the Settlement offers Rule 23-Absent FLSA Collective Members (as defined in the Agreement) the opportunity to join the case by accepting their FLSA Fund payment in exchange for opting into the Settlement and releasing their FLSA Claims (as set forth in the Agreement). The FLSA Collective Action Members and the participating Rule 23-Absent FLSA Collective Action Members who cash their FLSA Fund payment assert the same claims arising from the same policies of Defendant and are, for purposes of FLSA Collective treatment, similarly situated.

Read plainly: a cheque arriving from this settlement is not a windfall to deposit without thinking. Endorsing it is the act that joins you to the federal collective and releases your FLSA claims. It is the legal equivalent of the form that went unreturned last autumn — with the same consequence, executed by a bank teller.

Nothing about that is improper; courts approve this structure regularly, and it is the mechanism that gets money to people who ignored their post. But it inverts the ordinary instinct. In most settlements the deadline is the thing that costs you a right. In this one, it is the deposit.

The order does not say how many of the 840 fall inside the “Rule 23-Absent” group, and it does not have to — that definition lives in the Class and Collective Settlement Agreement, which was filed as an attachment to the preliminary approval motion (ECF No. 103) and is not among the documents publicly available on the docket. Anyone who receives a payment and wants the definition before endorsing it will have to ask class counsel for the Agreement.

The order certifies three classes, and names them:

“The Court finds that the Maine Rule 23 Class, Massachusetts Rule 23 Class, and the New York Rule 23 Class, as defined in the Agreement, each meet the requirements of Rule 23(a) and Rule 23(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”

Maine, Massachusetts, New York. Hannaford also operates stores in New Hampshire and Vermont, and neither state is named anywhere in the Final Approval Order. The class representatives track the three that are: Tasha Vye for the Maine Rule 23 Class, Cassandra Baker for the Massachusetts Rule 23 Class, and DestinyLynn Sortino and Michael Scott for the New York Rule 23 Class.

That does not tell you nobody in New Hampshire or Vermont is covered. The FLSA is a federal statute, and the collective's boundaries are set in the Class and Collective Settlement Agreement — filed as an attachment to the preliminary approval motion (ECF No. 103) and not among the documents publicly available on the docket. What the order does establish is that the state-law route, the one that pays without any action from you, exists in three states and not in those two.

The order sets out the deductions in figures, not percentages.

• Attorneys' fees: $2,958,333.33. “The Court approves Plaintiffs' Counsel's requested fees award of $2,958,333.33 and expense award of $32,168.18, for a total of $2,990,501.18.” That is one third of the gross, to the cent — $8,875,000 divided by three is $2,958,333.33.
• Litigation expenses: $32,168.18.
• Settlement administration: $40,850.00. “the Settlement Administrator shall be awarded $40,850.00 for the Settlement Administration Costs.”
• Service awards: $25,000. $10,000 to Tasha Vye; $5,000 each to Cassandra Baker, DestinyLynn Sortino and Michael Scott.

What is left for the people who worked the overtime: $5,818,648.82. The order directs “that the remaining funds from the Gross Settlement Amount be distributed to Settlement Class Members as set forth in the Agreement.”

How that is split between the Rule 23 classes and the FLSA fund, and how individual shares are calculated, is in the Agreement rather than the order. Averages should be treated with care here for a reason we keep running into: an average across a group where a few long-tenured managers carry most of the hours tells you very little about the median cheque.

Paragraph 13 of the order deals with exclusions, and it is one sentence about one person. Exactly one Rule 23 Class Member asked to be excluded and will therefore not participate in or be bound by the settlement. We are leaving the name where it belongs, in the court file.

Only Rule 23 class members can opt out at all — the FLSA side is opt-in, so the 1,296 who received collective notice were never part of that count. Against three certified state classes, a single exclusion is at the low end even by class-action standards.

The administration site for this case was rg2claims.com/hannafordmanagerovertime.html, titled “HANNAFORD BROS. MANAGER OVERTIME COLLECTIVE ACTION LAWSUIT,” with a matching contact page. As of September 10, 2026, both return an Amazon S3 error rather than a page: NoSuchKey — The specified key does not exist, naming the missing file. The pages are still in Google's index; the files behind them are gone.

We are reporting what we saw, on the date we saw it, and not more than that. An S3 key can disappear for mundane reasons, and a site being taken down after final approval and dismissal is ordinary housekeeping rather than a red flag. But it matters practically: if a cheque arrives and the recipient wants to check whether it is real, the obvious place to look is currently a blank error page. The documents that are definitely still public are the court's — Document 109 and Document 111 on the docket in Case 2:24-cv-00339-LEW.

Class counsel are named in the order and are the correct place to ask: Head Law Firm, LLC, Klafter Lesser, LLP, and Murray Plumb & Murray, appointed Class Counsel under Rule 23(g)(3).

Not on the day of the order. Paragraph 12 ties it to finality:

As of the date this judgment becomes final (meaning that the time for appeal has expired with no appeal taken, all appeals are resolved and none are left pending, or this judgment is affirmed in all material respects after completion of the appellate process), Plaintiffs, Participating Rule 23 Class Members, and FLSA Collective Members are forever barred from bringing or presenting any action or proceeding against any of the Released Parties that involves or asserts any of the applicable released claims as set forth in the Agreement.

Judgment was entered August 27, 2026. The order does not set a payment date — paragraph 11 sends the distribution mechanics to the Agreement, which is not on the public docket — so we cannot tell you when cheques go out, only that the release switches on when the appeal window closes. What we can tell you is what endorsing one does.