Source: https://openjurist.org/615/f2d/985
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 20:37:26+00:00

Document:
Lois G. Williams, Washington, D. C. (Carin Ann Clauss, Sol. of Labor, Donald S. Shire, Associate Sol., Anna K. Holmberg, Gregory O'Duden, Washington, D. C., on brief), for appellant.
Daniel M. Shea, Atlanta, Ga. (David B. Adcock, Dan T. Carter, Smith, Currie & Hancock, Atlanta, Ga., Thornton H. Brooks, Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard, Greensboro, N. C., on brief), for appellee.
Before HALL, PHILLIPS and MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judges.
The primary question on this appeal is whether an age discrimination suit brought by the Secretary of Labor under the authority of § 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act is effectively commenced, for statute of limitations purposes, with the filing of a complaint which does not name the aggrieved individuals. We believe that a § 17 action is commenced for all purposes when the complaint is filed, regardless of whether the individuals are named in it. Accordingly, we vacate the order of the district court granting summary judgment for defendant on the Secretary's § 17 claim, and remand this case for further proceedings.
Sec. 7. (b) The provisions of this Act shall be enforced in accordance with the powers, remedies, and procedures provided in sections 11(b), 16 (except for subsection (a) thereof), and 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended (29 U.S.C. §§ 211(b), 216, 217), and subsection (c) of this section. . . . Amounts owing to a person as a result of a violation of this Act shall be deemed to be unpaid minimum wages or unpaid overtime compensation for purposes of sections 16 and 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act . . . : Provided, That liquidated damages shall be payable only in cases of willful violations of this Act. In any action brought to enforce this Act the court shall have jurisdiction to grant such legal or equitable relief as may be appropriate to effectuate the purposes of this Act, including without limitation judgments compelling employment, reinstatement or promotion, or enforcing the liability for amounts deemed to be unpaid minimum wages or unpaid overtime compensation under this section. . . .
(c) Any person aggrieved may bring a civil action in any court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes of this Act: Provided, That the right of any person to bring such action shall terminate upon the commencement of an action by the Secretary to enforce the right of such employee under this Act. ADEA § 7, 29 U.S.C. § 626.
the restraint of any withholding of payment of minimum wages or overtime compensation found by the court to be due to employees under this chapter (except sums which employees are barred from recovering, at the time of the commencement of the action to restrain the violations, by virtue of (the applicable statute of limitations)).
. . . In determining when an action is commenced by the Secretary of Labor under this subsection for the purposes of the statutes of limitations . . . , it shall be considered to be commenced in the case of any individual claimant on the date when the complaint is filed if he is specifically named as a party plaintiff in the complaint, or if his name did not so appear, on the subsequent date on which his name is added as a party plaintiff in such action. FLSA § 16(c), 29 U.S.C. § 216(c).
The primary question in this case is whether this special definition of commencement of an action, or some variation of it, applies in an age discrimination case seeking back pay for individuals, brought by the Secretary under § 17 alone.
The district court granted the motion, upon the recommendation of a magistrate, and entered summary judgment for defendant on all claims, including those for prospective injunctive relief. The court reasoned that, by specifying that the ADEA shall be enforced in accordance with the provisions of "sections 11(b), 16 . . . , and 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act" (emphasis supplied), Congress intended that the Secretary comply with the requirements of both § 16 and § 17 in any suit brought under the ADEA. Applying the special § 16(c) definition of "commencement" to the Secretary's complaint, the court concluded that the action had never been properly commenced.
We disagree. The "selectivity that Congress exhibited in incorporating provisions and in modifying certain FLSA practices strongly suggests that but for those changes Congress expressly made, it intended to incorporate fully the remedies and procedures of the FLSA." Lorillard v. Pons, supra, 98 S.Ct. at 871 (emphasis supplied). We are totally unpersuaded that, by utilizing the connective word "and" in the listing of FLSA sections which it incorporated into the ADEA, Congress "expressly" manifested an intent to meld the historically distinct FLSA remedies into one conglomerate action. Further, we are convinced that the usual definition of "commencement", that is, the filing of a complaint, see F.R.C.P. 3, applies to an action brought by the Secretary under § 17.
In enacting the ADEA in 1967, Congress was well aware of the judicial interpretations which had been given to the FLSA sections it was adopting, and is presumed to have incorporated those interpretations as well. Lorillard v. Pons, supra, 98 S.Ct. at 870. The pre-1967 interpretations of §§ 16 and 17 were uniform in holding that the two sections provided distinct and alternative remedies, and that the peculiar requirements of § 16 had no application to an action brought under § 17.3 In particular, at least two courts had held prior to 1967 that a § 17 complaint did not have to name the individuals on whose behalf the Secretary was proceeding in order to effectively commence the action for statute of limitations purposes. Wirtz v. Novinger's, Inc., 261 F.Supp. 698 (M.D.Pa.1966); Wirtz v. W. G. Lockhart Construction Co., 230 F.Supp. 823 (N.D.Ohio 1964). See also Wirtz v. Harper Buffing Machine Co., 280 F.Supp. 376 (D.Conn.1968), aff'd as modified, 18 Wage & Hour Cas. 894 (2d Cir. 1968). We know of no court, before or after 1967, which has ever held to the contrary.
"Commencement of the action" is a term of art with an established common meaning, i.e., the filing of a complaint. " '(W)here words are employed in a statute which had at the time a well-known meaning at common law or in the law of this country, they are presumed to have been used in that sense unless the context compels to the contrary' ". Lorillard v. Pons, supra, 98 S.Ct. at 871 (citations omitted).
The detailed definition of "commencement" provided in FLSA § 16(c), which is limited by its own terms to an action brought "under this subsection", indicates that where Congress wished to deviate from the common meaning of the term, it did so explicitly. Section 16 is the only provision applicable to the ADEA which distinguishes between the filing of a complaint and the commencement of an action. We find nothing in the language or histories of the ADEA and FLSA to indicate that, in employing this common term in other statutory sections without amplification, Congress intended to vest it with an extraordinary meaning. Cf. Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U.S. 750, 758, 99 S.Ct. 2066, 2073, 60 L.Ed.2d 609 (1979) (under ADEA § 14(b), 29 U.S.C. § 633(b), "commencement" means the filing of a complaint). We therefore hold that an age discrimination action brought by the Secretary of Labor under the authority of FLSA § 17 is effectively commenced for all purposes with the filing of the complaint, regardless of whether the complaint names the aggrieved individuals.
We recognize that, where the Secretary commences an action by filing a complaint which does not identify the individuals whose rights he seeks to enforce, there may be some uncertainty as to whether a particular employee's right to bring a private action has been terminated.4 However, this potential for uncertainty also exists in FLSA actions,5 and the paucity of cases dealing with the issue indicates that the problem rarely arises. Any uncertainty which does exist can be eliminated, as it was in this case and has been in FLSA cases, through the use of discovery procedures. See Hodgson v. Brookhaven General Hospital, 436 F.2d 719, 722 (5th Cir. 1970); James v. General Tire & Rubber Co., 63 LC P 32,373 (E.D.Va.1970).
Finally, the district court also held that, by including a claim for liquidated damages in his prayer for relief, the Secretary had elected to proceed under both § 16(c) and § 17, and that the § 16 provisions were therefore applicable to the entire action. The Secretary contends that the action was brought under § 17 alone, and should be judged solely according to the requirements of that section.
We affirm the judgment of the district court only insofar as it grants judgment for defendant on the liquidated damages claim. Since the claims cognizable in a § 17 action, including those for employment, reinstatement and back pay, were not time barred when the Secretary's complaint was filed, we vacate the district court's grant of summary judgment on these claims, and remand for further proceedings.
The 1961 legislative grant of authority to the Secretary to proceed under § 17 to seek an injunction against the withholding of back pay was intended to overcome the consequences of the perceived reluctance of individual employees, who, under the three extant ways of proceeding, had to consent to suits to recover back pay for them. In allowing a recovery even absent such consent, Congress intended to deal only with the remedy, the route for recovery of back pay, not with the right to back pay itself. Nothing in the 1961 statute nor in the legislative history constitutes an indication of congressional intent to disturb the existing uniform scheme under the FLSA that guaranteed an employer identification, before the applicable limitations period had expired, of any employee or employees for whom back pay was being sought. On the contrary, there are sufficient persuasive indications of a legislative purpose in 1961 to maintain the existing requirement for § 17 actions. The requirement that names of employees be named was not abrogated in 1961 for the other three ways of recovering back pay,5 and language specifically added to § 17 in 1961, correctly read, established that the requirement should apply to an action by the Secretary under § 17. That the FLSA § 17 language so provided is reinforced by the way in which the same phraseology was employed for a related purpose when, in 1967, the ADEA, itself, was adopted.
In such circumstances, it simply cuts against the grain of reason to assume or infer a non-articulated congressional intent to give the Secretary, under § 17, a substantial tactical advantage denied the Secretary himself under § 16(c) and denied individual plaintiffs and class or collective action plaintiffs under § 16(b). The tactical advantage would indeed be a large one, enabling the Secretary, as plaintiff, to postpone, in extreme cases even up to the time immediately preceding final judgment, revelation to the defendant of what claims he was exposed to, and should be preparing or should have prepared to defend against.
The majority's answer that the information can be obtained by diligent discovery on the defendant's part is not a sufficient or satisfactory one. If the complaint is not filed until the last moment before the statute of limitations would have run (which, as here, may be three years after the alleged violation occurred), even the most rapid discovery will not make the vitally important information available until well after the expiration of the limitations period prescribed by Congress. Congress prescribed that period for the very purpose of protecting defendants against stale claims and against the attendant hardships of witness unavailability, memory dissipation, and record destruction. Furthermore, even after an initial supplying, in response to a defendant's interrogatory, of the names known at the time of filing the complaint, under the result reached by the majority the Secretary will be free subsequently throughout the life of the lawsuit to add names of those who subsequently come to his attention at even more remote points in time.
Of course, an employer which through violating the FLSA or the ADEA has deprived its employees of wages to which they were entitled is not at first blush an engaging object of solicitude. However, the accusation is not the equivalent of proof, and the very obloquy attached to such a designation is a strong reason not to place an employer in the awkward and unfair position where his opportunities to defend against such a charge are lost because undue passage of time has rendered the critical evidence unavailable. By enacting a statute of limitations in the first place, and by further providing, uniformly, that an employee's back pay claim was litigable only if the employer had been notified of the name of the claimant by a statement in the court papers before the limitations period had run, Congress had repeatedly, prior to 1961, indicated an intent that employers should have a fair chance to defend themselves from such serious charges.
It seems unlikely indeed, therefore, that Congress, without explicitly saying so, intended that, of all litigants, an arm of the United States government a litigant whose vast resources of funds and competent counsel disqualify it for special favors should have a tactical advantage denied all others authorized by the same statute to seek recovery of back wages. To say that Congress had such an intent, in the absence of clear language to that effect, is to impute irrationality, capriciousness and unconcern for fairness. Such an imputation contradicts both reality and established rules of statutory interpretation.
The ADEA complaint with which we are here concerned was filed by the Secretary on February 11, 1976, seeking relief from Gilbarco with respect to asserted violations of the ADEA occurring in the period February 11, 1973, through February 11, 1976.6 The complaint as originally filed did not identify the employees whose rights Gilbarco allegedly violated. No amendment to the complaint ever occurred. No written consents of any employees to become parties plaintiff or to authorize suit on their behalf were filed. By way of interrogatory, interrogatory answer and stipulation, at times later than February 11, 1976, the date the complaint was filed, identification of the 25 employees as to whom relief was sought occurred. The significance of those developments can better be appreciated after the legal principles which I contend should apply to them have been established, and elaboration with respect to them is, therefore, deferred.
In the cases of all but one of the 25 employees so identified as those whose rights the Secretary was seeking to enforce, they were terminated by Gilbarco on various dates between February 28, 1973, and February 28, 1975. The one employee whose employment had not been terminated allegedly suffered age discrimination during the specified three year period.
The remedies sought by the Secretary included an injunction against future violations of the ADEA, reinstatement for the discharged employees, injunctive relief against the withholding of back pay for them and for the employee who had not been discharged, but who also allegedly had suffered discriminatory treatment, and liquidated damages equal to the recoverable back pay as provided for in the applicable statute. As I have indicated, it is only with respect to the disposition of the back pay claim that I am in disagreement with my colleagues.
(b) The provisions of this Act shall be enforced in accordance with the powers, remedies, and procedures provided in sections 11(b), 16 (except for subsection (a) thereof), and 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended (29 U.S.C. 211(b), 216, 217), and subsection (c) of this section. Any act prohibited under section 4 of this Act shall be deemed to be a prohibited act under section 15 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended (29 U.S.C. 215). Amounts owing to a person as a result of a violation of this Act shall be deemed to be unpaid minimum wages or unpaid overtime compensation for purposes of sections 16 and 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended (29 U.S.C. 216, 217).
The positions of the parties are altogether divergent. Gilbarco contends that the applicable language governing what is necessary to toll the running of limitations is found in § 16(c) of the FLSA, as incorporated by reference into ADEA, which has not been complied with by the Secretary. The Secretary replies that, this being a § 17 action, the filing of the complaint on February 11, 1976 tolled all limitations applicable to the case.
1. Whether the three district court decisions relating to the applicability of limitations to an FLSA § 17 action do, indeed, support the position of the Secretary.
2. Whether, assuming they do, the considerations influencing the courts which decided them are present when a single integrated statute, the ADEA, is being construed, the interpretation of the FLSA in those cases having depended in significant measure on the non-contemporaneous character of the FLSA sections which the defendants in those cases were contending should be interpreted in pari materia.
3. Whether provisions of the ADEA do establish that Congress wished to depart to a significant extent, insofar as the precise issue confronting us here is concerned, from powers, remedies and procedures provided in the FLSA, as interpreted by the three district court opinions.
To conduct the investigation properly requires a detailed and somewhat tedious historical description of the evolution of the FLSA from its initial enactment in 1938 through and beyond the enactment of the ADEA in 1967.
As originally promulgated, the Fair Labor Standards Act, by § 16(b), permitted employee suits initiated by (1) the individual employees themselves on their behalf and on behalf of other employees similarly situated or (2) by a designated agent or representative of such employee or employees for all employees similarly situated. To the extent the action was on behalf of others than the named plaintiffs, no consent to the representation was required. Section 16(b) permitted recovery of unpaid wages or overtime and an additional equal amount representing liquidated damages.
(a) If the cause of action accrues on or after May 14, 1947 may be commenced within 2 years after the cause of action accrued, and every such action shall be forever barred unless commenced within 2 years after the cause of action accrued.
The question of interrelationship between employee actions under FLSA § 16(b) and Secretary actions under FLSA § 17 was a source of litigation. The practice arose of initiation by the Secretary of a § 17 action with a subsequent settlement with the defendant employer which included an undertaking to pay back wages to the employees involved. See Hodgson v. Wheaton Glass Co., 446 F.2d 527, 529 (3d Cir. 1971). However, the Second Circuit decided Rigopoulos v. Kervan, 140 F.2d 506 (2d Cir. 1943) in a manner which disrupted and brought to a virtual standstill that procedure for obtaining compliance with the objectives of the FLSA. In Rigopoulos, it was held that there was no identity of parties as between the Secretary in a § 17 action and employees in a § 16(b) action and that, consequently, a settlement of the § 17 action would not bar, by way of collateral estoppel, a subsequent independent § 16(b) suit in which the employees might recover liquidated damages in amounts equal to the back pay awards as well as the statutorily authorized attorney's fees and costs.16 As a consequence, employers were unwilling to settle § 17 actions.
There was a related question as to whether the § 17 jurisdiction to restrain violations of the FLSA in fact extended to an order in a suit by the Secretary that the defendant should not withhold back pay. "Some courts took the view that such jurisdiction did not exist; others held that it did." Wirtz v. Robert E. Bob Adair, Inc., 224 F.Supp. 750, 754 (W.D.Ark.1963). In McComb v. Frank Scerbo & Sons, Inc., 177 F.2d 137 (2d Cir. 1949), it was held that a district court, under § 17, when granting injunctive relief against further violations of the FLSA could additionally make back pay awards for the benefit of the employees who had been adversely affected by past infractions.
1. Authority in the Secretary to supervise the payment of unpaid wages owing to any employee or employees, with acceptance of such payment by any employee constituting a waiver of the employee's right under subsection 16(b) to sue for back pay or liquidated damages.
2. Authority in the Secretary to sue for back pay on behalf of any employee who had first submitted a written request that the Secretary initiate such an action.
3. A bar, on waiver grounds, to the bringing by any employee of a subsection 16(b) action, if the employee had consented to a subsection 16(c) suit by the Secretary.
4. A restriction on the Secretary's authority to bring such a subsection 16(c) suit precluding his doing so "in any case involving an issue of law which has not been settled finally by the courts."
In determining when an action is commenced by the Administrator under this subsection for the purposes of the two-year statute of limitations provided in section 255(a) (§ 6(a) of the Portal-to-Portal Act) of this title, it shall be considered to be commenced in the case of any individual claimant on the date when the complaint is filed if he is specifically named as a party plaintiff in the complaint, or if his name did not so appear, on the subsequent date on which his name is added as a party plaintiff in such action.
Provided, That no court shall have jurisdiction, in any action brought by the Administrator to restrain such violations, to order the payment to employees of unpaid minimum wages or unpaid overtime compensation or an additional equal amount as liquidated damages in such action.
The same result was insured as to § 16(c) because § 16(c) explicitly stated that an action under it was not considered "commenced," insofar as any individual employee was concerned, for purposes of tolling the statute of limitations, until the employee, either originally, or by subsequent amendment, was "specifically named as a party plaintiff." Since no back pay award (sought as such rather than as a sanction for contempt of an injunction earlier entered against future violations) was possible under § 17, no question of tolling for purposes of a back pay claim arose under that section,18 and there was a uniform, essential harmony prevailing under § 16(b), § 16(c) and § 17 on the requirement that, to toll the statute of limitations with respect to any FLSA claim that employees were entitled to back pay, the court papers had specifically to name the employees.
By contrast, there was no such harmony present insofar as the § 16(c) "no novel question of law" limitation was concerned. An employee, if he chose not to consent to the Secretary's suit, could maintain a § 16(b) action and recover back wages even though his theory for establishing liability was, prior to the decision in his case, novel and his basis for recovery had, hence, theretofore been unsettled.19 Similarly, for the purposes of restraining future violations, the Secretary could obtain injunctive relief under § 17 against future violations, although his theory for proceeding were novel.20 Thus, on this aspect of the matter, § 16(b) and § 17 were harmonious; but § 16(c) was expressly discordant.
The district courts, together with the United States District Court for the District of the Canal Zone, the District Court of the Virgin Islands, and the District Court of Guam shall have jurisdiction, for cause shown, to restrain violations of section 215 of this title, including in the case of violations of section 215(a)(2) of this title the restraint of any withholding of payment of minimum wages or overtime compensation found by the court to be due to employees under this chapter (except sums which employees are barred from recovering, at the time of the commencement of the action to restrain the violations, by virtue of the provisions of section 255 of this title (§ 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act)). (Emphasis supplied).
The right provided by this subsection to bring an action by or on behalf of any employee, and the right of any employee to become a party plaintiff to any such action, shall terminate upon the filing of a complaint by the Secretary of Labor in an action under section 217 of this title in which restraint is sought of any further delay in the payment of unpaid minimum wages, or the amount of unpaid overtime compensation, as the case may be, owing to such employee under section 206 or section 207 of this title by an employer liable therefor under the provisions of this subsection. (Emphasis supplied).
The presumption of such congressional intent is greatly fortified by the consideration that, both when § 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act and when § 16(c) of the FLSA were adopted, the only other occasions when limitations on FLSA back pay recoveries were dealt with, the Congress clearly contemplated that, for purposes of determining what court activity would toll the statute of limitations, the "filing of the complaint" and "the commencement of the action" might occur at two different points of time insofar as individual employees were concerned. There might be a "filing of a complaint" which, because it did not list an employee, would not constitute the commencement of the action for limitations tolling purposes insofar as he was concerned. The commencement of the action, although accomplished for all other purposes by the filing of the complaint, would only occur for him, insofar as limitations tolling was concerned, at a later date when his name was in fact identified by a pleading in court.
Those, then, were the circumstances when Wirtz v. Lockhart Construction Co., 230 F.Supp. 823 (N.D.Ohio 1964), Wirtz v. Novinger's Inc., 261 F.Supp. 698 (M.D.Pa.1966), and Wirtz v. Harper Buffing Machine Co., 280 F.Supp. 376 (D.Conn.1968), modified and, as modified, affirmed, 18 Wage & Hour Cas. 894 (2d Cir. 1968) were decided.
Lockhart, a § 17 suit seeking, inter alia, back pay awards, was initiated on August 8, 1963, by the filing of the Secretary's complaint. The complaint did not at first identify by name the employees to whom it asserted back pay was due, but on October 22, 1963, it was amended to name each such employee. The only limitations period then applicable being two years, the defendant sought dismissal to the extent that back pay for the period prior to October 22, 1961 was claimed (i. e. the contention was that back pay for the period August 8, 1961 to October 22, 1961 was time-barred).
Lockhart's major thrust was directed at repelling the contention that, because § 16(c) related to the same sort of claim as a back pay claim under § 17, the language of § 16(c) requiring naming of names should be imported into § 17. Quite correctly, the district court repudiated such an approach, for the very reason that the language was not repeated in § 17. The court cited the interpretation aid: "Expressio unius est exclusio alterius," and made altogether clear its decision was restricted to a holding that § 16(c) language should not be brought over bodily into § 17. Nothing was said about whether language in § 17, itself, on its own would have directly led to the result the defendant was arguing for. Presumably defendant made no such contention.
Wirtz v. Novinger's Inc., 261 F.Supp. 698 (M.D.Pa.1966) involved a § 17 complaint by the Secretary which, from the outset, did name the names of the very 68 employees for whom back pay was sought. Hence, for the specific issue which confronts us, the case provides no authority as to when tolling of the statute begins. The further contention was made that written consents had not been obtained from each employee, so the action under § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act had not been "commenced" for purposes of the limitations provisions set out in § 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act, so the § 6 two year statute had not been tolled.
The Novinger's court did not even allude to the possibility that, because of language contained in § 17 itself, the naming of the employees would be required to toll the statute. Much less did it, therefore, address the question of whether, as an interpretive aid, to establish the meaning of language used in § 17, rather than directly, § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act had any significance. The question did not arise, no doubt primarily because the naming of names at the very outset, in the complaint as initially filed, eliminated any reason to consider the question.
Novinger's also cited Lockhart for the eminently sound proposition that the tolling provisions of § 16(c) were not made applicable to § 17. Again in this connection, as in Lockhart, the Pennsylvania district court in Novinger's did not address the question of whether language in § 17 itself meant that naming of the individual employees in the court papers was necessary to toll limitations.
Because of that amendment, the language in FLSA § 16(c) stating that the tolling of the statute of limitations would occur only upon "commencement of the action" through the naming of each respective employee as a party plaintiff was adjusted so that the reference to "the two-year statute of limitations provided in section 255(a) (§ 6(a) of the Portal-to-Portal Act)" became "the statutes of limitations provided in section 255(a)."
For our present purposes, by 1967 two district court cases39 had rejected arguments that, in a § 17 action, identification, in a filing with the court, of an individual employee was required in order to toll the running of the statute of limitations with respect to a back pay claim on behalf of the employee. The rejected arguments proceeded on theories of importation into § 17 of § 16(c) and of direct application of § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act. However, no attention had been directed presumably because no defendant had ever asserted the point to the proposition that § 17, by its own language, created a requirement of naming employees to toll limitations.
The unmade argument is, nevertheless, one which possesses considerable merit. We are not here called upon actually to determine how, with it fully considered, the scales would tip in a true FLSA case. It suffices to recognize the extant status of the argument, for it bears directly on the issue which is of importance to us: In what state was the law, when, in 1967, ADEA was adopted, as to what would suffice to toll limitations in a FLSA § 17 action to restrain withholding of back pay?
1. By § 17 itself, the Secretary is barred from recovering back pay for any employee who would himself be time-barred by virtue of the provisions of § 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act "at the time of the commencement of the action."
2. The intent of Congress in the 1961 amendment to § 17 was to improve the remedy for enforcing the employees' back pay claims, not to create a new right. Wirtz v. W. G. Lockhart Construction Co., 230 F.Supp. 823, 825 (N.D.Ohio 1964) (". . . for this 1961 Amendment to the Act created merely a new remedy and not a new right . . ."); Wirtz v. A. G. Wimpy Co., Inc., 48 Lab.Cas. 41,945, 41,948 (M.D.Fla.1963) ("The 1961 amendments merely restored the courts' traditional equity jurisdiction to order restitution of monies wrongfully withheld as part of the enforcement remedy. This 1961 change in the statute, being remedial only and not affecting substantive rights and responsibilities under the Act . . ."); Goldberg v. M & K Manufacturing Co., Inc., 230 F.Supp. 151, 152 (D.Col.1962) ("The amendment (to Section 17 of the Act) does not impose any new sanction or create any new right . . . . The 1961 amendment affects the remedy and not the right.").
Even so, it is a long step to extend the ancient practice of courts of equity to situations in which the claims recovered, as an incident to an injunction, belong to others; and it is an utterly indefensible step, unless he represents the employees in his recovery on their behalf. Moreover, if he does so represent them, I cannot understand on what theory they are not bound by the judgment, like any other persons whose claims are prosecuted by an authorized representative. If employers are to be excepted from the universally accepted doctrine that a claim once decided is finally decided unless the decision is revoked, I should demand the most inescapable warrant for it in the words used. Indeed, were I among those who find those results unconstitutional, which chance to be deeply repugnant to their personal feelings, I might even invoke the Fifth Amendment; for it seems to me to the last degree oppressive to hold that, after an employer has been put to a trial upon the claims of A, B, C and D, and has either succeeded in proving that he owes them nothing, or less than they demand, he may be later subjected to a series of actions by those very employees upon those very claims (Emphasis added).
Cf. James v. General Tire & Rubber Co., 63 Lab.Cas. 44,354, 44,356 (E.D.Va.1970) (referring to a § 17 back pay remedy as creating rights in the employee himself); Jones v. American Window Cleaning Corp., 210 F.Supp. 921, 924 (E.D.Va.1962).
That Congress recognized the essential difference between the pre-1961 § 17 action seeking injunctive relief against future violations and the type of § 17 action newly introduced in 1961, which could seek relief for past violations is borne out by the language of the contemporaneous 1961 amendment to § 16(b) preempting the right of an employee to sue in his own behalf. Not every § 17 action by the Secretary was to preclude the employee. Rather the preemption was restricted to "an action under § 17 . . . in which restraint is sought of any further delay in the payment of" back pay. Similarly, the limitations language added to § 17 in 1961 applied exclusively to the newly authorized back pay claims, not to § 17 relief in general.
The essential identity of the right asserted in a § 17 action by the Secretary for back pay and the right an individual asserts under § 16(b) has further been recognized even in cases where the Secretary's § 17 action seeks back pay, not as the initial relief, but, secondarily, as a sanction for violating an earlier injunction against future violations. As one district judge put it:However, here, in respect of the restitution of back wages, the proceeding is for the benefit of the employees in an action brought by an official acting in behalf of the United States and the employees.
Admittedly the statute of limitations would apply to any action brought by the employees. What greater right does the party suing have than the party for whose benefit the suit is brought? He must be limited in his recovery to that which the holder of the beneficial interest is entitled to.
Tobin v. Alma Mills, 92 F.Supp. 728, 734 (W.D.S.C.1950) modified on other grounds rendering the statute of limitations point moot, 192 F.2d 133 (4th Cir. 1951), cert. denied, 343 U.S. 933, 72 S.Ct. 769, 96 L.Ed. 1342 (1952). That language was approved and followed in Tobin v. Mason & Dixon Lines, Inc., 102 F.Supp. 466, 473 (E.D.Tenn.1951), and Wirtz v. Chase, 400 F.2d 665, 669 (6th Cir. 1968). In Chase, after setting out the language from Alma Mills quoted above, the author of the opinion stated: "This makes sense to the writer."
Further evidence that Congress completely equated the scope of the right to back pay recoverable in a legal action under § 16 with the right to back pay in an equitable action under § 17 is to be found in the 1949 amendments by which Congress discontinued § 17 back pay jurisdiction entirely while introducing § 16(c). Congress addressed not the scope of the overall right but the varying extent of the several remedies (complete under § 16(b), partial under § 16(c) and abrogated under § 17).
Finally, the supposed different nature of a § 17 action for back pay as being primarily to effectuate broad policy objectives of the Secretary in contrast to actions by individual employees is suspect for another reason. Shultz v. Mistletoe Express Service, Inc., 434 F.2d 1267, 1272-73 (10th Cir. 1970) recognizes that, because § 17 is equitable, the court has the discretionary right to deny the relief of back pay even when a prima facie case is made out, if a weighing of the equities, nevertheless, favors the defendant. In comparing the equities in that case, the court weighed those of the employees (not those of the Secretary) against those of the defendant and found that the balance favored the employees. "In the case at bar those considerations favor the employees on whose behalf the Secretary is acting."
The effect of the amendment of § 17 is to restore fully the Scerbo remedy, but to make that remedy subject to the statute of limitations which would be applicable to an employee's suit at law.
We assume that this exception has specifically to do only with money unpaid and owing to employees at the time the injunction action is commenced. It does, however, evidence Congressional purpose to forbid the Secretary from employing an equitable proceeding to collect stale claims that otherwise would be barred.
Of the two phrases, one "the filing of a complaint," clearly occupies the "earlier in time" position. Hence, where, as here, they, with virtual certainty, mean different things, the other phrase "the commencement of the action," means some point in time later than the filing of the complaint.
6. What point in time was meant by "commencement of the action" in § 17 is not difficult to discover. It is that point in time as of which, for each employee, the employer is put on notice by a paper filed in court that the back pay claim is being made for that employee. This is not because § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act is directly applicable to § 17 for purposes of determining when limitations are tolled as to back pay claims. It is not. Rather, in § 17 there is the particular tolling language with which we are concerned which supplants to that extent § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act. Nevertheless, the closest place to look for a definition of "the commencement of the action," as that term is used in § 17, is § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act. It states that, in the situation where "commencement of the action" and "filing of the complaint" do not mean the same thing and, for reasons adduced above, they do not mean the same thing here the action shall be considered commenced as to each individual employee when he is named as a party plaintiff in the complaint or when subsequently a paper is filed in court identifying him as one whose back pay is being sought.
7. In 1966 an FLSA amendment altered the portion of § 16(c) which defined "commencement of the action" for limitations tolling purposes, leaving unchanged the altogether unambiguous definition of the term as applying to a time later than the date of the filing of the complaint whenever the employees are not named as parties plaintiff. While such continuation of the definition in a related context could by no means carry the burden of the argument alone, it is at least consistent with not contrary to the definition of "commencement of the action" in § 17 which the argument supports.
Contemporaneous interpretation by the Secretary of this nature may not be determinative. See, however, Fleming v. Mohawk Wrecking & Lumber Co., 331 U.S. 111, 116, 67 S.Ct. 1129, 91 L.Ed. 1375 (1947). Nevertheless, it is consistent with, not in contradiction of, the proposition that naming of names was statutorily required to toll limitations for the purposes of § 17 back pay claims. If the matter was as clear back in 1961 as the Secretary now asserts, it is puzzling why he resorted to the pleading technique of specifying the employees.
In passing legislation to overcome the evil of discrimination by employers on grounds of age, Congress looked primarily to two existing statutory sources, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e to 2000e-17, and the FLSA. As matters developed there was borrowing from both sources.45 As earlier indicated, there was incorporation by reference of several sections of the FLSA, namely, §§ 11(b), 16(b), 16(c) and 17. Significantly, § 11(a) was not incorporated by reference. The failure to refer to § 11(a) eliminated the sole basis for the rulings under the FLSA proper that only the Secretary could initiate a § 17 action. Other provisions of the ADEA make quite clear the Congressional intent to allow private individuals to sue under § 17. Subsection 7(b) provides: "In any action brought to enforce this act the court shall have jurisdiction to grant such legal or equitable relief as may be appropriate to effectuate the purposes of this act, . . ." (emphasis supplied). In subsection 7(c) (which by later amendment has become § 7(c)(1)46), it was provided that "Any person aggrieved may bring a civil action in any court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes of this act . . . ." Coupled with the consideration that the ADEA did not, in addition to incorporating by reference the detailed descriptions of legal ways of proceeding in FLSA §§ 16(b) and 16(c) and the equitable way of proceeding in § 17, spell out any other ways of proceeding, it seems clear that, by the references in ADEA § 7(b) and § 7(c), Congress contemplated no general, undefined grants of jurisdiction over claims for legal and equitable relief over and beyond those which § 16(b), § 16(c) and § 17 afford. The effect of such unstructured grants of jurisdiction would be essentially to render obsolete the very FLSA sections which Congress was at pains to specify would be available under ADEA. The spelling out of specific remedial provisions generally rules out other forms of proceeding.47 On that basis, the equitable jurisdiction under § 17 previously available under FLSA to the Secretary alone would for ADEA be available to individual employees as well. The possibility that this could lead to competing suits under § 17, one or more by employees and another by the Secretary, is precluded by the proviso of § 7(c) of the ADEA "That the right of any person to bring such an action (for legal or equitable relief) shall terminate upon the commencement of an action by the Secretary to enforce the right of such employee under this act."
1. Of primary importance is the use of the term "the commencement of an action" to describe what step by the Secretary would cut off the right of an employee to bring his own action. It might, once again, approached abstractly, mean "the filing of the complaint," or it might mean the point in time when the particular employee has been identified in the court papers by the Secretary as one for whom the Secretary is seeking an award of back pay. One indication that it does not mean the filing of a complaint which does not name names stems from the consideration that the 1961 cut-off inserted into § 16(b) which was to be triggered by the Secretary's proceeding under § 17 was couched in terms of "the filing of a complaint." The apparently conscious choice of different language to accomplish a similar end under ADEA § 7(c) suggests, if it does not fully establish, a congressional intention to mean something else, especially since the alternative phrase chosen, "commencement of an action" had been assigned, under FLSA a well-defined different meaning.
Obviously, it would constitute a more acceptable, fairer statutory scheme to defer preemption by the Secretary until such time as he had demonstrated that his § 17 complaint was brought on behalf of the employee. That demonstration would come with the employee's naming by the Secretary in court papers. Congress thus has expressed an intent, in the ADEA, to defer the cut-off until the employee is named. In achieving the elimination of a mischievous anomaly, it has used "commencement of the action" to indicate that the point in time it had in mind was when the employee was identified in the Secretary's § 17 action. Congress has done so without the explicit spelling out that "commencement of the action" means naming of names which appeared the first two times it was so used: In 1947 in § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act, and in 1949 in FLSA § 16(c). That in 1967 Congress did not regard it as necessary to define yet again "commencement of the action" is strongly indicative that such was the case also in 1961 when a tolling provision couched in terms of commencement of the action was inserted into § 17.
2. The ADEA extension to individual employees of the right to seek directly equitable relief highlights the proposition that there are not, insofar as back pay relief is concerned, any antagonisms between § 16(b) and § 17. For purposes of the ADEA, the phrases "commencement of the action" appearing in § 16(b) (through § 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act), in § 16(c) and in § 17 were enacted contemporaneously in 1967, and in pari materia status is even more compellingly present than when it is contended that employment of the same phrase in different sections in 1949 and 1961 evidences an intention to mean the same thing.
Even if, under FLSA, there is some vestigial basis for asserting that a claim by the Secretary under § 17 is designed to correct generalized, company-wide underpayment practices, and not merely to recover for individual employees, such an argument has little weight for ADEA. Age discrimination is much more inherently personalized to individuals, not so much a matter of pattern and practice. Cf. Laugesen v. Anaconda Co., 510 F.2d 307, 312, n.4 (6th Cir. 1975).
In the tangled skein which we are attempting to unravel, it is not surprising to find at least one matted group of threads which appears to contradict the conclusion towards which matters have otherwise been tending. Such a contrary consideration is provided by the failure of Congress in 1967 to incorporate § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act into ADEA. See Morelock v. NCR Corp., 586 F.2d 1096, 1103 (6th Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 906, 99 S.Ct. 1995, 60 L.Ed.2d 375 (1979). At the same time, it did incorporate § 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act. However, we need not decide for present purposes whether, as a consequence of that omission, the definition of "commencement of the action" for purposes of § 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act was intentionally altered, so that it would, insofar as tolling of limitations is concerned, continue to mean one thing for FLSA purposes, Walsh-Healey Act purposes and Bacon-Davis Act purposes and mean something quite different for ADEA purposes. It might well be possible that adoption of § 6 was sufficient to carry the definitional gloss of the words contained in it, even though the lexicographical source was not picked up too. Congress does not have specifically to mention standard reference dictionaries as pertinent to its legislative enactments, and perhaps such mention of other sources of meaning is not necessary.
Thus, as I end my odyssey through the statutory Mediterranean bordering the FLSA and ADEA shores, I conclude that, for purposes of § 17 of the FLSA, as incorporated into ADEA in 1967, tolling of limitations, insofar as a suit by the Secretary to recover back pay is concerned, occurs, as to each employee, only when his name first appears in a paper filed with the court by the Secretary.51 Reading ADEA § 7(c)(1) in pari materia with FLSA § 17, as it was contemporaneously incorporated into ADEA, leads to the conclusion that for limitations tolling purposes in § 17 back pay actions, "commencement of the action" means as to each individual employee, the point in time when he is named by the Secretary in a court paper. While it would seem that, for FLSA purposes also, § 17 could be so interpreted to achieve harmony with § 16(b) (as it is supplemented by § 6 and § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act) and § 16(c), that question is not before us, and I, therefore, do not reach it.
Against my loquaciously and laboriously arrived at conclusion, the majority puts forth the succinct proposition that the matter should be resolved on the basis of two district court opinions which had held, for FLSA § 17 purposes, that naming of employees in the court papers was not necessary to toll limitations. The majority opinion states, though I have located no legislative history to support the statement, that those judicial interpretations were ones of which Congress was "well aware" when, in 1967, it enacted the ADEA. The majority seeks to extend to the situation with which we are confronted the presumption of awareness relied on in Lorillard v. Pons. Lorillard, however, concerned a matter that "long before Congress enacted the ADEA . . . was well established," namely "that there was a right to a jury trial in private actions pursuant to the FLSA." 434 U.S. at 580, 98 S.Ct. at 870. The Supreme Court based its assumption of awareness on the part of Congress as to what the courts had been doing in interpreting the FLSA on the fact "that courts had uniformly afforded jury trials under the FLSA" (emphasis supplied). Id. at 585, 98 S.Ct. at 873.
With all respect, I am not prepared to accept that by 1967 even the principle for which the two district court decisions in Lockhart and Novinger's truly stand (that the § 16(c) naming requirement was not to be imported bodily in § 17) was judicially well-established. Far less can it be said that they had established a principle which they never discussed, much less announced. The principle for which those cases in fact stand, namely that the language of § 16(c) does not create for § 17 a requirement to name names to toll the statute of limitations, was already independently well established by virtue of the complete unambiguity of the language of the statute alone, and I have no quarrel with the results of those cases. It is not right to say, however, that they in any way stand for the broader proposition, for which the majority cites them, that nothing in the FLSA, and particularly nothing in § 17 itself, creates a need to specify individual employees to toll the statute of limitations for purposes of a § 17 back pay action. That was never argued before the Lockhart and Novinger's courts. It could not have been argued in Novinger's, where the employees were listed in the original complaint. It could barely have been argued in Lockhart, and then only with respect to the back pay attributable to a short period of less than eleven weeks measured by the interval between original filing of the complaint and an amendment naming the employees. The Lockhart court made clear that the argument was not asserted by the employer, whom the court described as raising the limitations point not on its own behalf but simply to protect the hypothetical right of employees still to be able to bring a § 16(b) action until their names had been identified in the court papers by the Secretary in his § 17 action.
In short, those two cases are no authority, one way or the other, as to what was established, when ADEA was enacted in 1967, on the issue of whether § 17 itself required naming to accomplish tolling. The only thing, apart from the statutory language itself, which demonstrated what was "established," was the general disposition of the Secretary to specify employees in his complaints seeking back pay under § 17. So contrary to the result of the majority, both the statute itself and the Secretary's behavior support my conclusion that naming was required to accomplish tolling.
In the circumstances, it is inappropriate to apply the principle of Lorillard v. Pons that well-established interpretations under the FLSA continue to apply for the same sections after their incorporation into the ADEA. Either there was no well-established interpretation on the point at issue, or the interpretation favored the conclusion that specification of employees must take place to effect tolling of limitations.
We stated in Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U.S. 106, 119 (60 S.Ct. 444, 451, 84 L.Ed. 604), that "It would require very persuasive circumstances enveloping Congressional silence to debar this Court from reexamining its own doctrines." It is at best treacherous to find in congressional silence alone the adoption of a controlling rule of law. We do not think under the circumstances of this legislative history that we can properly place on the shoulders of Congress the burden of the Court's own error. The history of the 1940 Act is at most equivocal. It contains no affirmative recognition of the rule of the Schwimmer (United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644, 49 S.Ct. 448, 73 L.Ed. 889), Macintosh (United States v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605, 51 S.Ct. 570, 75 L.Ed. 1302) and Bland (United States v. Bland, 283 U.S. 636, 51 S.Ct. 569, 75 L.Ed. 1319) cases. The silence of Congress and its inaction are as consistent with a desire to leave the problem fluid as they are with an adoption by silence of the rule of those cases.
We are not dealing here with a situation where the meaning of statutory language is resolved by reference to explicit statements of Congressional purpose. Maguire v. Commissioner (313 U.S. 1, 61 S.Ct. 789, 85 L.Ed. 1149), supra; Helvering v. Campbell (313 U.S. 15, 61 S.Ct. 798, 85 L.Ed. 1159), supra. Here, the Committee Reports on the 1934 Act are wholly silent as to whether a taxpayer has acquired property within the meaning of § 113(a)(5) at a time when he has obtained only a contingent remainder interest. And we need not stop to inquire whether, in absence of the Treasury Regulations under the 1934 Act, the administrative construction of "acquisition" under the earlier Acts was of such a character (Higgins v. Commissioner, 312 U.S. 212 (61 S.Ct. 475, 85 L.Ed. 783)) and the prior judicial decisions had such consistency and uniformity that Congressional reenactment of the language in question was an adoption of its previous interpretation, within the rule of such cases as United States v. Dakota-Montana Oil Co., 288 U.S. 459 (53 S.Ct. 435, 77 L.Ed. 893). That rule is no more than an aid in statutory construction. While it is useful at times in resolving statutory ambiguities, it does not mean that the prior construction has become so embedded in the law that only Congress can effect a change.
Nor does want of specific Congressional repudiations of the St. Louis Trust cases (Helvering v. St. Louis Trust Co., 296 U.S. 39, 56 S.Ct. 74, 80 L.Ed. 29) serve as an implied instruction by Congress to us not to reconsider, in the light of new experience, whether those decisions, in conjunction with the Klein case (Klein v. United States, 283 U.S. 231, 51 S.Ct. 398, 75 L.Ed. 996), make for dissonance of doctrine. It would require very persuasive circumstances enveloping Congressional silence to debar this Court from re-examining its own doctrines. To explain the cause of non-action by Congress when Congress itself sheds no light is to venture into speculative unrealities. Congress may not have had its attention directed to an undesirable decision; and there is no indication that as to the St. Louis Trust cases it had, even by any bill that found its way into a committee pigeon-hole. . . . Various considerations of parliamentary tactics and strategy might be suggested as reasons for the inaction of the Treasury and of Congress, but they would only be sufficient to indicate that we walk on quicksand when we try to find in the absence of corrective legislation a controlling legal principle.
Throughout the twentieth century, the reenactment doctrine has commonly been overstated. The Supreme Court asserted in 1908 that "the reenactment by Congress, without change, of a statute, which had previously received long continued executive construction is an adoption by Congress of such construction." . . .
And it has been presumed that when Congress reenacted an earlier federal statute, it knew and approved prior judicial constructions of such act by state courts. The rule is of special importance where administrative rulings and interpretations are under constant observation of the legislature. But it does not apply where there is nothing to indicate that the legislature had its attention directed to the administrative interpretation when a provision was reenacted. Doubt as to the value of the rule has been manifested, moreover, where the extent to which the practical construction was followed and known has not been shown.
If congressional awareness of Supreme Court holdings is not to be assumed, is it proper to assume such awareness of two district court decisions?
Indeed, it is the epitome of irony that the majority rests its conclusion primarily on Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 98 S.Ct. 866, 55 L.Ed.2d 40 (1978). For applying the essential teaching of that case to the 1961 amendment of the FLSA compels the result which I have reached, not the contrary. In Lorillard, as here, the Supreme Court confronted a situation where the scope of coverage of an existing statutory framework was expanded. In Lorillard, methods for recovery of back pay denied employees through age discrimination practices were plugged into the existing FLSA comprehensive statutory pattern. In the instant case, an extended remedy for recovery of back pay denied employees through violation of wage and hour requirements of the FLSA was engrafted upon the existing comprehensive statutory pattern.
In both cases, the existing statutory framework included a well-established procedural rule. In Lorillard, the procedural rule was that a jury trial was available. In this case, the procedural rule was that, to toll limitations in a case to recover back pay, the individual employee for whom recovery was sought had to be named in the court papers. In both cases, the new statutory material failed explicitly to spell out that the existing well-established procedural rule was to be carried forward to the new material. In Lorillard, the holding was that the procedural rule that a jury trial was available, although not explicitly mentioned, was so integral to the statutory scheme that it should be carried forward. In this case, the right result is likewise to carry forward the integral procedural rule that names must be named. As in Lorillard, we are confronted with the task "of discerning congressional intent where the statute provides no express answer." Id. at 585, 98 S.Ct. at 872. As in Helvering v. Reynolds there are in the legislative history no "explicit statements of Congressional purpose."
Lorillard thus is similar to our situation in that it also concerned an extant well-established procedural rule. It is dissimilar in that the numerous pre-existing cases were fully consistent with the well-established procedural rule. Here the two district court cases, assuming they speak to the issue at all (and actually they do not), are inconsistent. The majority, by reading Lockhart and Novinger's as standing for a proposition which, on analysis, the two cases never considered, much less adopted, have reached a conclusion at war with Lorillard's teaching that a uniform existing procedure should be deemed to continue in effect for an expanded statute in the absence of a clear expression of congressional intent that it be discontinued.
The situation here is very like that presented by States Marine Lines, Inc. v. Shultz, 498 F.2d 1146, 1155 (4th Cir. 1974). The case concerned three interrelated statutory sections dealing with the manner in which government agents are to proceed where goods suspected of having been illegally imported have been seized. Under 19 U.S.C. § 1602, the officer involved is required "to report every such seizure immediately to the appropriate customs officer." The customs officer, by 19 U.S.C. § 1603, has the duty "to report such seizure . . . to the United States attorney." The United States attorney, in accordance with 19 U.S.C. § 1604 is obliged "immediately to inquire into the facts . . ., and . . . forthwith to cause the proper proceedings to be commenced and prosecuted, without delay . . .."
(W)e do believe that 19 U.S.C. § 1603 must be construed so as to require "immediate" reporting of the seizure to the United States Attorney . . .
Here, too, the several ADEA sections should be harmonized, so that the consistent objective with which the ADEA is pregnant may be attained. The omission of a reference in § 17 to the consideration that "commencement of the action" for statute of limitations tolling purposes means the specifying of the names of the employees on whose behalf claims are asserted should not be regarded as indicative of congressional intent to introduce a disturbing and unfair disharmony. On the contrary, the same reading of "commencement of the action" should be accepted for § 17 as has been clearly established for § 16(b) and § 16(c).
1. On April 12, 1976, the Secretary filed interrogatories. Without identifying them as persons for whom back pay was sought, the Secretary listed by name 25 employees, asking information as to (a) birthdates, (b) dates of employment, (c) details as to the position or positions of each and the duties associated with the positions, (d) reasons for the termination of each, and (e) other details relating to their terminations.
a. The representation by counsel for the Secretary that 26 persons were involved in the alleged discriminatory practice, and that, while others might be discovered, such a development was not contemplated.
b. "All parties plaintiff and defendant have been correctly designated."
c. "There is no question concerning misjoinder or nonjoinder of the parties."
d. ". . . counsel for the defendant asserts affirmative defenses, namely the Statute of Limitation . . . which will become the subject of a formal motion as required by Local Rule 21 or else those defenses will be deemed to have been abandoned."
3. On June 18, 1976, Gilbarco filed interrogatories, seeking inter alia identification of "each and every person known to Plaintiff alleging a claim of age discrimination . . . or on whose behalf Plaintiff seeks to enforce rights by this action."
4. On September 13, 1976, the Secretary answered the interrogatory, listing by name twenty-five individuals, who were exactly the same as those set out in the Secretary's interrogatories of April 12, 1976. The answer also referred, though not by name, to a twenty-sixth individual, a claimant who was not hired by Gilbarco after replying, in December 1975, to an advertisement published by Gilbarco.
The Secretary, with bureaucratic doggedness, has stuck throughout his presentations in this case solely to his proposition that filing of the complaint on February 11, 1976, tolled limitations. He apparently has been determined to prevail on his chosen theory, without regard for a second string to the bow which might save something for those he had a statutory responsibility to represent, in case the first one were to fail. Nevertheless, that second string is evidently available and I should not be disposed to punish the employees for the Secretary's intransigeant attitude.
The back pay claims of John J. Robichaux, the employee who never was terminated, to the extent they relate to the period prior to April 26, 1974 (April 26, 1973, if the violations were willful), are time-barred.54 Otherwise they are not. The claims of the unnamed job applicant are barred by limitations since he has never been named, and more than three years have elapsed since the filing of the complaint, to say nothing of the greater period of time which has passed since the December 1975 asserted act of discrimination.
See Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U.S. 750, 99 S.Ct. 2066, 60 L.Ed.2d 609 (1979).
Although litigation under the ADEA is generally governed by provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, Congress made several express modifications in incorporating the FLSA enforcement provisions. The criminal sanctions applicable to willful violations of the FLSA, § 16(a), 29 U.S.C. § 216(a), for example, do not apply to ADEA violations. ADEA § 7(b), 29 U.S.C. § 626(b). However, the ADEA's provisions for civil actions are significantly broader than those of the FLSA. The remedy in FLSA actions brought by the Secretary or by individuals under § 16 of that Act is limited to the legal relief of an award of unpaid wages due plus an equal sum as "liquidated damages." Injunctive relief under the FLSA may be obtained only in an action brought under § 17, and only the Secretary is authorized to bring such an action. FLSA § 11(a), 29 U.S.C. § 211(a). Under the ADEA, the court may grant legal or equitable relief in any action brought to enforce the statute's provisions. ADEA § 7, 29 U.S.C. § 626.
The explicit manner in which Congress modified existing statutory provisions which were incorporated into the ADEA indicates that the courts should not infer additional modifications. Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 98 S.Ct. 866, 871, 55 L.Ed. 40 (1978).
Further, Congress itself clearly did not intend for the peculiar § 16(c) requirements to apply to § 17 actions by the Secretary. The 1961 amendments to the FLSA, which first authorized the Secretary to collect unpaid wages in a § 17 action, were enacted specifically to allow the Secretary to sue free of the § 16(c) requirement that the employees first request him to do so. S.Rep.No.145, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., reprinted in 1961 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 1620, 1658.
ADEA § 7(c), 29 U.S.C. § 626(c), provides that an individual's right to bring a private action "shall terminate upon the commencement of an action by the Secretary to enforce the right of such employee under this Act."
However, the Secretary has repeatedly asserted, and it is unmistakably clear from the jurisdictional statements in Paragraph I(a) of the complaint, that this action was brought pursuant to Section 17 alone (A. 12). Section 16(c) is mentioned only in conjunction with the request for liquidated damages in the prayer for relief (A. 14). It is well established pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(c) that the prayer for relief constitutes no part of a cause of action and that a party may be granted any relief to which the facts of the case prove he is entitled, irrespective of the contents of the prayer.
Section 2 of the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 has no applicability, for the reason that the Wage and Hour Administrator is not seeking to subject an employer 'to any liability or punishment' under the Fair Labor Standards Act, but is seeking to prevent future violations of the act, which he has a plain right to do.
Despite the 1949 amendment to § 17 denying jurisdiction to award back pay, courts generally concluded that, where there had been an initial "future violations" injunction obtained in the public interest by the Secretary under § 17 which the employer thereafter violated, an appropriate sanction which might be imposed to purge the civil contempt was an order to pay back wages improperly withheld while the injunction was in force. The reaction of some courts was to hold that such a back pay award for contempt purging purposes was not subject to the limitations provisions of the Portal-to-Portal Act, at all, and could relate to the entire period from the date of the original injunction. Tobin v. Frost-Arnett Co., 34 Lab.Cas. 95,780 (W.D.Tenn.1958), aff'd per curiam, 264 F.2d 246 (6th Cir. 1959); Wirtz v. Ocala Gas Co., 336 F.2d 236, 243 (5th Cir. 1964).
However, that view was repudiated in other cases and the two year statute of limitations contained in the Portal-to-Portal Act was held to apply. Tobin v. Alma Mills, 92 F.Supp. 728, 734-35 (W.D.S.C.1950), modified on other grounds rendering the statute of limitations question moot, 192 F.2d 133, 135 (4th Cir. 1951), cert. denied, 343 U.S. 933, 72 S.Ct. 769, 96 L.Ed. 1342 (1952); Tobin v. Mason & Dixon Lines, Inc., 102 F.Supp. 466, 473 (E.D.Tenn.1951); cf. Wirtz v. Chase, 400 F.2d 665, 669 (6th Cir. 1968) (distinguishing Frost-Arnett Co. on the grounds of the 1961 amendment to § 17 of the FLSA). These cases evince a recognition that, for FLSA interpretation purposes, uniformity of treatment of back pay claims, even though made under distinct subsections of the act, was an end so desirable that the applicability of language in one subsection to an action under another subsection would be inferred, at least in the absence of an expression of congressional intent that a different result was to be reached. For the cases holding the statute of limitations applicable to a § 17 back pay award, even though no statutory language made it directly applicable, the date of filing of the petition for a contempt citation was uniformly accepted as the date from which to compute the limitations period.
Since the back pay awards were sought only as sanctions for violations of injunctions against future violations which had been designed to secure public benefits, it would have been unrealistic to regard the payments ordered to purge a civil contempt as ones recovered in a collective or class action for the benefit of the employees. No individual employee could have sued for such a benefit under § 16(b) for himself or for others. Thus, a basis was lacking for any argument that the naming-of-employees provisions of § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act were applicable, and it is not surprising that no defendant sought to have limitations computed from a date later than the filing of the petition seeking citation for contempt. This is especially so since the main objective of the defendants was to escape back pay awards for the much longer periods ranging back to the dates of the initial injunctions. Counsel, no doubt prudently, concentrated on the main limitations issue and, if they realized the point existed at all, presumably did not care to risk vitiating the force of their arguments on the major issue by urging, in addition, a lesser, yet even more complicated one. Moreover, it appears that it was the Secretary's practice to name the names of the employees in the petitions for contempt citations, in which case the issue would not have been present in any event. See Tobin v. Mason & Dixon Lines, Inc., supra, 102 F.Supp. 466 at 468; Tobin v. Frost-Arnett Co., supra, 34 Lab.Cas. at p. 95,782.
Because legal documents are for the most part nonemotive, it is presumed that the author's language has been used, not for its artistic or emotional effect, but for its ability to convey ideas. Accordingly, it is presumed that the author has not varied his terminology unless he has changed his meaning, and has not changed his meaning unless he has varied his terminology; that is, that he has committed neither "elegant variation" nor "utraquistic subterfuge." This is the rebuttable presumption of formal consistency.
Another more direct route to the result reached was available, but was not perceived by the Novinger's court, precisely because the defendant did not make the assertion that § 17, by its own language, would establish directly a tolling test to determine whether the action was time-barred. The more direct way to establish that § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act did not, insofar as limitations tolling was concerned, control an action for back pay under § 17 was to recognize that § 7 was a more general provision for tolling of limitations than was the particular language of § 17 ("except sums which employees are barred from recovering, at the time of the commencement of the action . . . by virtue of the provisions of § 6 of the Portal-to-Portal Act"). As between the two, the particular language, saying nothing about consents, would take precedence, and render the more general legislation inapplicable. See 2A Sutherland, Statutes & Statutory Construction 57 (C. D. Sands 4th ed. 1973) ("Where there is inescapable conflict between general terms or provisions of a statute and other terms or provisions therein of a specific nature, the specific will prevail and be given effect over the general.").
The correctness of the proposition is emphasized by considering the tolling language contained in § 16(c) ("in the case of any individual claimant on the date when the complaint is filed if he is specifically named as a party plaintiff in the complaint, or if his name did not so appear, on the subsequent date on which his name is added as a party plaintiff . . ."). Manifestly that § 16(c) language supplants, for tolling purposes, the somewhat different language of § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act. The point is that tolling, for § 17 back pay action purposes, is controlled by § 17's own language, not by § 7 of the Portal-to-Portal Act.
Here, in stark contrast, on the face of § 17 there is an indication that Congress wanted the same result under § 16(b) and § 17 rather than an anomalous difference. Section 17 refers to "commencement of the action" as the event which would toll the statute. For both other remedial sections, § 16(b) and § 16(c), "commencement of the action" is also the tolling event. In each of them "commencement of the action" means identification to the defendant by a paper filed in court of the particular employees whose claims are being asserted. It is altogether reasonable that "commencement of the action" means the same thing in § 17. It would approach unreasonableness very closely were it to be held that the phrase means different things for § 16(b) and § 16(c), on the one hand, and for § 17, on the other.
Furthermore, we not only have something on the face of § 17; we also have a double anomaly, one as to § 16(b), another as to § 16(c). The anomaly which engaged the attention of the Wheaton Glass court was, at best, only half an anomaly. The "no novel question" restriction in § 16(c) was not repeated in § 16(b) or in § 17. Since the scope of the back pay remedy available under § 16(b) and under § 17 was identical, while, as between § 16(c) and § 17, the scope was different, it made more sense to align § 16(b) and § 17, which the Wheaton Glass court did to hold that the "no novel question" requirement was inapplicable to § 17, than to accept the contrary contention that § 16(c) and § 17 should be aligned. The argument here considered would achieve alignment of all three sections.
Statutes are considered to be in pari materia to pertain to the same subject matter when they relate to the same person or thing, or to the same class of persons or things, or have the same purpose or object.
. . . (A)pplication of the rule that statutes in pari materia should be construed together is most justified, and light from that source has the greatest probative force, in the case of statutes relating to the same subject matter that were passed . . . on the same day . . .
The action was itself by an individual employee under § 16(b). However, reference is made to a preempting § 17 complaint by the Secretary, filed February 19, 1962, which "specifically" named "approximately 135 employees, including the plaintiff, . . . as parties for whom a restraint is sought . . ."
In an action brought under paragraph (1), a person shall be entitled to a trial by jury of any issue of fact in any such action for recovery of amounts owing as a result of a violation of this chapter, regardless of whether equitable relief is sought by any party in such action.
In fact, legislation where the statute designated a particular remedy for enforcing a right or power which did not previously exist provided the first application of the maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius. 2A Sutherland, supra, n.29, at 127.
The reason the question need not be answered is that the post-1967 FLSA amendments further consolidate, rather than contradict, the conclusion independently reached as to the statutory meaning as of 1967. The amendments need not assist decision. They merely confirm that the calculation of the projected course of the comet was correct, for Congress has given further indications that the several remedial sections are designed to achieve identical, not varying, results insofar as recovery of back pay is concerned.
(a) To permit the Secretary to seek liquidated damages, a remedy theretofore available only to employees under § 16(b).
(b) To eliminate the "no novel question" restriction theretofore peculiar to § 16(c).
(c) To do away with the condition of employee consents, never imposed for § 17.
(d) To continue the statutory scheme designed to prevent contemporaneous suits by both the employee under § 16(b) and the Secretary under § 16(c) for back pay (and pendent liquidated damages), a scheme which theretofore had been maintained by the consents requirement, by terminating the § 16(b) rights of employees to sue upon "the filing of a complaint" by the Secretary under § 16(c).
In thereby insuring for the FLSA harmony as between § 16(b) and § 16(c) as to what is the cut-off date, Congress again demonstrated that it appreciated the difference between "commencement of the action" and "filing of a complaint," as descriptions of the point in time at which the cut-off would occur. This is particularly true here, for the amended § 16(c) continued to spell out that, although "filing of the complaint" by the Secretary would cut off the rights of the employees themselves to sue, the controlling event, for statute of limitations tolling purposes, would, nevertheless, be something other than filing of the complaint, i. e. "commencement of the action" by naming of the individual employees as parties plaintiff.
Davis, at p. 68, goes far to emasculate the reenactment doctrine by writing "Perhaps the aids play a larger role in writing opinions than in making decisions. . . . The aids may usually bolster decisions made on other grounds, . . ."

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