Employment – FLSA — successor liability

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Employment – FLSA — successor liability

Successor liability is appropriate in suits to enforce federal labor or employment laws, even when the successor disclaimed liability when it acquired the assets in question, unless there are good reasons to withhold such liability.

“The idea behind having a distinct federal standard applicable to federal labor and employment statutes is that these statutes are intended either to foster labor peace, as in the National Labor Relations Act, or to protect workers’ rights, as in Title VII, and that in either type of case the imposition of successor liability will often be necessary to achieve the statutory goals because the workers will often be unable to head off a corporate sale by their employer aimed at extinguishing the employer’s liability to them. This logic extends to suits to enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act. ‘The FLSA was passed to protect workers’ standards of living through the regulation of working conditions. 29 U.S.C. § 202. That fundamental purpose is as fully deserving of protection as the labor peace, anti-discrimination, and worker security policies underlying the NLRA, Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, ERISA, and MPPAA.’ Steinbach v. Hubbard, 51 F.3d 843, 845 (9th Cir. 1995). In the absence of successor liability, a violator of the Act could escape liability, or at least make relief much more difficult to obtain, by selling its assets without an assumption of liabilities by the buyer (for such an assumption would reduce the purchase price by imposing a cost on the buyer) and then dissolving. And although it can be argued that imposing successor liability in such a case impedes the operation of the market in companies by increasing the cost to the buyer of a company that may have violated the FLSA, it’s not a strong argument. The successor will have been compensated for bearing the liabilities by paying less for the assets it’s buying; it will have paid less because the net value of the assets will have been diminished by the associated liabilities.”

Affirmed.

12-2440 & 12-3029 Teed v. Thomas & Betts Power Solutions, LLC

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, Crabb, J., Posner, J.