In Samiento v. World Yacht Inc. (10 NY3d 70, 883 N.E.2d 990 [2008]), the Court of Appeals held that a charge which is not a voluntary payment may be a "charge purported to be a gratuity" within the meaning of the statute. In that case, the defendants operated dining or banquet cruises in New York harbor; plaintiffs, employees on banquet cruises, alleged that a 20% service charge was imposed and that customers were told that the proceeds were remitted to the waitstaff as the gratuity but the proceeds were not so remitted and, because of the service charge, customers did not themselves pay any gratuity. The Court of Appeals addressed whether plaintiffs had stated a cause of action under Labor Law Section 196-d. Defendants asserted that, in order to come within Section 196-d, a payment must be voluntary and, therefore, a mandatory charge could not come within the purview of the statute. The Court of Appeals disagreed. It held that the statute is to be liberally construed and that if a charge, even if mandatory, purports to be a gratuity, it is within the reach of the statute. Whether a charge "purports to be a gratuity" is measured by whether a reasonable patron would understand that a service charge was being collected in lieu of a gratuity (Samiento, 70 NY3d at 79.) The Court of Appeals held that a mandatory service charge may fall within Labor Law 196-d "when it is shown that employers represented or allowed their customers to believe that the charges were in fact gratuities for their employees" (10 NY3d at 81 ). The test is an objective one that looks to whether, given the totality of all relevant facts and circumstances, a reasonable "banquet patron would understand a service charge was being collected in lieu of a gratuity" (id. at 79). Thus, a mandatory service charge may purport to be a gratuity even in the absence of allegations that the service charge expressly was represented to patrons to be a gratuity.