Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/512/
Timestamp: 2018-07-23 04:15:37
Document Index: 382358547

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 203', '§ 3', '§ 203', '§ 3', '§ 206', '§ 203', '§ 203', '§ 779']

Brennan v. Arnheim & Neely, Inc. :: 410 U.S. 512 (1973) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 410 › Brennan v. Arnheim & Neely, Inc.
Respondent company, a fully integrated real estate management concern directing from its central office manifold operations at nine separately owned buildings, including leasing the properties for the owners and hiring, firing, supervising, and negotiating the ages of those employed in the buildings, held to be an "enterprise" within the meaning of § 3(r) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, since respondent conducts related activities through unified operation or control, for a common business purpose. It is irrelevant, for purposes of defining the respondent's enterprise under § 3(r), that the building owners, who are not defendants in this enforcement action under the Act, have no relationship with one another and no common business purpose, since their activities as employers are not at issue here. Pp. 410 U. S. 516-521.
STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and Douglas, BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 410 U. S. 521.
The District Court held that the maintenance, custodial, and operational workers at the buildings managed by the respondent were "employees," and that the respondent was an "employer," within the meaning of §§ 3(d) and 3(e) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 203(d), (e). 324 F.Supp. at 992-993. The District Court also held that gross rentals, rather than commissions obtained, were the proper measure of "annual gross volume of sales made or business done" for purposes of the dollar volume portion of the statutory definition of an "enterprise engaged in commerce." Id. at 993-994. [Footnote 1] Though it rejected the claim that the respondent was sufficiently engaged in commerce for its employees to be covered for
the time before the 1966 amendments to the Act went into effect, [Footnote 2] the District Court determined that the aggregate activities of the respondent at all nine locations were "related," performed under "common control," and for "a common business purpose," thereby constituting an "enterprise" within the meaning of § 3(r), 29 U.S.C. § 203(r). 324 F.Supp. at 994-995.
Without reaching the issues regarding the respondent's engagement in commerce prior to 1967, the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for proof of the individual gross rentals of the buildings. Ibid. In order to resolve the intercircuit conflict, we granted the Secretary's petition for certiorari, 409 U.S. 840, which raises the question whether the management activities of the respondent at all of the buildings served should be aggregated as part of a single "enterprise" within the meaning of § 3(r) of the Act. Since no cross-petition for certiorari was filed by the respondent, the important issues of whether the respondent is in fact, an "employer" of the building workers within the meaning of the Act, and whether gross rentals, rather than gross commissions, should serve as the measure of "gross sales," are not before us. [Footnote 3]
the Act. Rather than confining the protections of the Act to employees who were themselves "engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce," 29 U.S.C. § 206(a), 207(a), the new' amendments brought those "employed in an enterprise engaged in commerce" within the ambit of the minimum wage and maximum hours provisions. [Footnote 4] The Congress defined "enterprise engaged in commerce" to include a dollar volume limitation. The standard in the original amendments included
cause they dealt with a large real estate management company. This is true, but also beside the point, since we deal here with that large management company as a party and, for purposes of this case, as an employer of the employees in question. We do not hold, nor could we in this case, that the individual building owners, in their capacity as employers, [Footnote 5] are to be aggregated to create some abstract "enterprise" for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act. [Footnote 6]
F.2d at 614. Once again, however, the response to this argument is that it is the respondent management company, not the individual building owners, that has been held in this case to be an "employer" of all the affected "employees." Furthermore, the proper measure of the respondent's size has been held to be the gross rentals produced by properties under its management. It is true that one purpose of the dollar-volume limitation in the statutory definition of "enterprise" is the exemption of small businesses, but this respondent is not such a business under these holdings of the Court of Appeals. [Footnote 7] The argument to the contrary amounts to a collateral attack on the "employer" and "gross sales" determinations made below, and the respondent cannot make such an attack in the absence of a cross-petition for certiorari. [Footnote 8]
"any establishment of any such enterprise . . . which has employees engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce if the annual gross volume of sales of such enterprise is not less than $1,000,000. . . ."
NLRB v. International Van Lines, 409 U. S. 48, 409 U. S. 52 n. 4, and cases there cited. But see n 8, infra.
or in the production of goods for commerce." [Footnote 2/1] 29 U.S.C. §§ 203(s), 206, and 207. An "enterprise" for the purpose of the Act
In the case before us, nine separately and independently owned buildings leasing space to tenants employed the same management company as agent to recommend tenants, collect rents, hire, fire, and supervise employees, and maintain and operate the buildings. The Court holds that, even if none of the individual building owners would itself generate gross rentals in sufficient amount to be covered by the Act, the buildings and the management company collectively are an enterprise with collective gross rentals in excess of the statutory minimums and hence covered by the Act. [Footnote 2/2] Because it appears to me that the Court is applying the concept of enterprise in a way which ignores the economic limitations in the Act and the congressional intention they represent, I respectfully dissent.
The Arnheim & Neely agency unquestionably was an "employer" insofar as its relationship to each of the buildings was concerned, for 29 U.S.C. § 203(d) defines the term employer as including "any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee. . . ." But this is a far cry from concluding that the separate buildings and their common agent constitute an enterprise engaged in commerce. [Footnote 2/3]
This is demonstrated by 29 CFR § 779.203, which provides that the "terms [employer,' `establishment,' and `enterprise'] are not synonymous."