Opinion ID: 543581
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Effect of the District Court's Employment Status Holding on Other Issues

Text: 36 The district court has stated alternative grounds for the summary judgment against Mayeske. We decline to review these alternative holdings, since they all rest on the court's conclusion that Mayeske was not an IAFF employee. 37 As its most important alternative reason for rejecting Mayeske's claims, the district court concluded that even if plaintiffs were considered 'employees' of the IAFF within the meaning of ERISA, they would still not qualify as 'participants.'  Mayeske, No. 86-3283, slip op. at 24. In its analysis of the participation issue, however, the court explicitly relied on its determination that Mayeske was not an IAFF employee. See id. at 23 (Because plaintiffs were not IAFF 'employees' within the meaning of ERISA, it follows that they were not 'participants' either.); see also id. at 19 (noting that under ERISA's definition of participant, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 1002(7), participants must be employees). In deciding whether Mayeske enjoyed participant status under the terms of the IAFF Staff Representatives' Pension Plan, moreover, the court asked whether the IAFF employed Mayeske 10 --an inquiry that involved many of the same factors as the court's analysis under Holt. Id. at 26; see id. at 26-27. 11 Given this connection between the court's employment status analysis and its participation analysis, separate review of the holding that Mayeske lacked participant status seems to us imprudent, if not impossible. 38 For similar reasons, we decline to review the district court's summary judgment against Mayeske on her claims of retaliation, wrongful denial of pension plan documents, and breach of a duty owed to a third-party beneficiary under the Cooperative Agreements. The district court rejected the first two of these claims because of its conclusion that Mayeske was not an IAFF employee or a pension plan participant. See id. at 29 ([B]ecause plaintiffs were neither employees nor participants within the context of ERISA, they had no 'ERISA rights' to exercise. Hence, the defendant IAFF officers can hardly be said to have violated ERISA section 510, by retaliating against plaintiffs....) (footnote omitted); id. at 30 ([D]efendants had no legal obligation to provide plaintiffs with copies of the IAFF pension plan documents, because plaintiffs were neither participants nor beneficiaries of any of the plans.); see also id. at 18-19 (calling participant status a standing requirement under ERISA). The court's holding that Mayeske was not an IAFF employee also accounts for its dismissal of the pendent local-law claims: the court refused to exercise jurisdiction over Mayeske's third-party-beneficiary claims largely because it had rejected Mayeske's ERISA claims. See id. at 35. 39 On remand, the district court should redetermine all of the above issues in light of our reasoning.