airlines operations they took over mesa accusing mesa took over sixty years routes they hired their pilots they gave them seniority but they said flight attendants were not interested and they walked away we filed a grievance saying that successorship provision clearly requires the purchasing company to hire those flight attendants and to give them this seniority in fact if i could i'd like to read in accordance with provisions of the grievance regardless of the nature of the transfer including purchase sale merger consolidation unification acquisition transfer of assets leasing of the operation reorganization arrangement for the benefit of creditors bankruptcy here mesa purchased the entire company operated separately and then folded it they walked away from this provision judge wake clearly erred because he failed to recognize once he made the determination in his decision that mace that was the successor as he states quite clearly he should have then denied the motion to dismiss there can be no question under the the d c circuit the only case really on all fours on point said quite clearly although a grievance under a collective bargaining agreement which no longer exists survives with the new employer because it's an respond answer in arbitration with a f a now but there was no delta at that time and still true delta is not unionized there is no system board for delta closer or the facts are even better than delta because there was no representation issue and originally the delta case arose in the whole argument was enforcing successorship agreement would that invoke or intrude on the jurisdiction of the national the mistake of trusting the company's words they said that they would give jobs to the flight attendants and for that reason we mistakenly relied on that promise and after the company went out of business there was no  in which to file their only alternative was to file with mesa and again in a motion of this mess we much accept the allegations as true and here the judge did not he in fact in the in the delta case in discussing the case accept the fact and we represented to the district court quite clearly we're not seeking specific performance further the the court erred when they he went off into analysis of whether in fact the c c or flight attendants are employees of mesa well that is the heart of that's the genesis of this dispute and that's the heart of the dispute which is to be resolved in arbitration are they in fact or is in fact required to nothing to do with successorship agreement had to do with united airlines purchasing specific rabs from pan am and the union got involved and said you know we'll agree to let you hire a certain number of pan am flight attendants and you read the case very carefully read the judge's decision carefully says they they bought a series of routes they didn't buy the company it was split up there was no successorship involved the case has nothing to do with this just a non employee because automatically they were supposed to be hired by mesa it's like an employee who is terminated and then the company and believe it or not companies still take this position you cannot employ you can't grieve this of course arbitrators record my name is joseph manson and i'm counsel for the op only airlines this case the court below focused on two critical components right from the beginning the first was one of the employees or the issue where employees of mesa airlines and the court found that they were not the second key point was whether or not mesa was a party to the collective bargaining agreement that was alleged to have been breached and the court found that it was not and so under the clear meaning of section two zero four of the railway labor act which is carefully crafted to resolve disputes between a carrier and its employees which is what the statute says with respect to the terms and conditions of employment at that carrier the judge correctly found that there was no obligation to arbitrate a dispute that was brought under the c c r contract by the same union that represented these employees with a different employer mean my answer quite simply is that the question of whether or not their employees it's a question of substantive arbiter ability because under the statute and order for there to be an obligation to go forward with an arbitration in the first place it has to be with your employees or there has to be some nexus and so on direct and clear employment right such as was in the polls where is united case where you nine it amended its collective bargaining agreement with the representative of the united pilots and said we're going to hire forty to pan american employees and one of those pan american employees was a plaintiff in a case that brought a case and a state court and and i think that the thing that the court needs to always keep in mind is a procedural path that the union chose to follow here they filed a grievance under the mesa collective bargaining agreement their allegation of the breach of a contract was not under the mayster collective bargaining agreement but was under the c c bargaining agreement that mesa was not a party  the term a successor was the answer to that well the answer to that is if if they got a judgment against c c air favorable judgment under the arbitration then they could have taken steps to try to enforce a judgment against me they may have been successful the may have not been successful but that is the path that they should have taken there are all kinds of cases as you just pointed out about pierce and the corporate veil and transactions where you have have successorship issues than affiliate company issues and issues such as disputes between its employees and the carrier with respect to terms and conditions that exist on i care now does that mean there could be a series of circumstances where a carrier as a successor cannot be held liable for a judgement or to be required to participate in this and i system or case for an acquired carrier there's a that's known that's a that's a delta case but in that case the kid station is that somehow can bootstrap themselves up to come under a collective bargaining agreement that they were never a party for that the union never represented them under that the company never agreed to consider them under the terms and conditions never applied that's what we have here so the judge correctly distinguished a half a western and importantly and a half a western f a brought the action against western they didn't bring it against delta they filed murderous carrier they had no other way to get their grievances resolved and so it was consistent with the railway labor act under the circumstances of a merger that the merged carrier would have to deal with  that in order to be subject to an arbitration clause you have to be a party going to act clause you have to be a party to that agreement and it is totally inappropriate the judge was one hundred percent correct  rguably to sustain your argument on the successorship issue is was mishandled by the judge and again the conrail case stood for the proposition at the beginning that you had a carrier and employees who were subject to the railway labor act on the issue that was before the court which was drug testing and the issue in that case was which procedural path which part of the railway labor act would be applied whether it would be a major dispute that is something that wasn't covered by the existing contract or whether it would go to a system board of adjustment which handles questions of interpretation of existing contracts that was in a in conrail it had nothing to do with the first and critical and and the first question that has to be was all about the court which is is there an obligation to arbitrate at all and there's a very good discussion you you've saved some time mason has always taken the position that there were disinterested third party who had nothing to do with c c r as if we open up the phone book and pointed to mason filed suit against them they own the company they made a decision it down they the court has said there was a successor having established that clearly under that successorship provision should comply the fact that judge wake limited dealt to whether they wer merged is really not relevant that's a very pinched understanding of that case that's what happened there but the successorship provision that c c year negotiated was much broader than that let me ask you a question that may or may not be relevant i think it will prove not to be