Court Opinion

ID: 9689280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:26:55.815202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:46.675268
License: Public Domain

YETKA, Justice
(dissenting).
While I agree that the trial court had jurisdiction, I dissent from the majority’s conclusion that ratification was not supported by the evidence. My examination of the record does not indicate that the trial court’s decision was clearly erroneous. Minn.R.Civ.P. 52.01. In reaching its conclusion, the trial court could have relied on the following facts:
1. Peter Dukinfield Co. had been paying into the trust funds without interruption for nearly 20 years.
2. It abided by the current contract wage scales, vacation and holiday benefits for all union and non-union carpenters.
3. The trust fund deductions from union carpenters were consistent in amount with the terms of the negotiated collective bargaining agreement.
4. The company failed to maintain any internal records which indicated whether an employee was a union or non-union carpenter. This distinction could only be ascertained from individual payroll records by reviewing whether fringe benefit fund contributions had been deducted.
5. The trust funds never received any communication from the company indicating that, although the company was making contributions, it did not intend to be bound by the collective bargaining agreement.
6. In 1970, the association sent out a list of all employers covered by a bond guaranteeing that payments due would be paid into the fund. It appears that it has not been customary to renew that list annually nor to produce a list of employers who were bound by the agreement. The pension fund had a right to expect that any employer who had paid into the fund had agreed to abide by that contract because if no contract existed, the employer was not justified in sending the money nor was the pension fund justified in accepting the funds. See 29 U.S.C. § 186 (1976).
I think it unlikely that an employer would voluntarily break the law by making payments into the fund; therefore, I believe that the employer did, in fact, ratify, by his actions, the contract establishing the pension fund and the payments that would be made into the fund. Dukinfield, after all, was a sophisticated, former union member himself who had been an officer in the past and is still a director in the association. Accordingly, I would affirm.