Opinion ID: 480737
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the dismissal of stright

Text: 76 Finally, we turn to plaintiff's challenge to the district court's summary dismissal of the claim against Stright for lost pension benefits. We note that our treatment of this contention may be superfluous since we affirm the judgment against Local 449 insofar as it awarded damages for lost pension rights, and plaintiff would not be allowed a double recovery. Nonetheless, since we conclude that the dismissal of Stright was erroneous, and the record does not reflect that plaintiff has actually collected this part of its judgment from the Union, we address the dismissal of Stright. 77 The district court granted summary judgment dismissing Stright on statute-of-limitations grounds on the assumption that Baskin knew of his claim against Stright in 1972 when his pension application was denied. The court's premise was that since there was no question that Stright had been obligated to make pension contributions at least as early as 1968 and Baskin learned in 1972 that such contributions had not been made, Baskin then knew or should have known of his cause of action against Stright. This premise misperceived the basis for the Pension Fund's rejection of Baskin's application. 78 Under the terms of the pension plan, a member of Local 449 was entitled to receive a pension if, upon reaching the pertinent retirement age, he had 15 years of service with a union employer and no disqualifying break in service. The Fund, having been advised by Local 449 that Stright was not a union employer prior to 1968, concluded that Baskin was not entitled to credit for union employment from 1963, when the Pension Fund was established, through 1967. Thus, it calculated that he had only some 14 1/2 years of covered employment (1952-1962 plus 1968-1970), and that he had a break in service from 1963 through 1967, and it denied the pension application on the ground that Baskin simply did not meet the pension plan's requirements. This decision did not depend on Stright's failure to make contributions after 1967, for if a union member meets the pension plan's requirements, he is entitled to the pension whether or not the employer has fulfilled its obligation to contribute. Rather, the rejection of the application resulted from the failure of Stright and the Union to acknowledge the existence of Stright's contractual obligation to make contributions in the period 1963 through 1967. That obligation was obscured by Stright's failure to contribute and the Union's failure to require it to contribute. 79 Had the Pension Fund known in 1971-1972 that Stright was contractually bound to Local 449 during the period 1963 through 1967, it would have been required to grant Baskin's pension application, for Baskin would have been credited with some 18 years of covered employment, and there would have been no break in service. Thus, Baskin's discovery that Stright had made no pension contributions in his behalf after 1968 was irrelevant to his cause of action, for the making of post-1968 payments would neither have increased the amount of covered employment with which he was credited nor eliminated his perceived break in service. 80 The Pension Fund sought repeatedly to obtain from Stright its payroll records with regard to Baskin for 1963 through 1967. Stright resisted until threatened with an audit, and steadfastly maintained that it was not a union employer prior to 1968. Even when Stright provided information, it apparently failed to reveal to the Fund that it had made contributions on Baskin's behalf to the Local 449 Welfare Fund from 1958 to 1970, a fact that could have led Fund officials to disbelieve the assertion that Stright was not a union employer prior to 1968. 81 Since there were genuine issues of fact as to whether and to what extent Stright concealed from Baskin Stright's status as a union employer prior to 1968, summary judgment dismissing the complaint against Stright on statute-of-limitations grounds was error. Plaintiff is entitled, if he wishes, to a trial on the claim against Stright.