Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

10-2489 Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Fund v. Georgia Pacific, LLC

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//March 29, 2011//

10-2489 Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Fund v. Georgia Pacific, LLC

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//March 29, 2011//

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals

Employment

Multiemployer pension plans

If a sale of a participant in a multiemployer pension plan had not occurred, everything else had remained the same, and no withdrawal liability would have accrued, then the sale to a buyer that continues the pension contributions does not entail withdrawal liability.

“Georgia-Pacific contends that the sale is ‘solely’ responsible for withdrawal in the sense that, if it had not sold the division and everything else had remained the same, it would still be a contributing employer and would not owe the Plan anything. Section 1384 avoids windfalls to pension plans: If plans would not recover anything in the absence of a sale, and don’t lose contributions because of the sale, then there is no reason why the Plan should receive a lump-sum payment. If, as the Plan contends, the word ‘solely’ in §1384(a) looks to events that precede the sale, why stop with the layoffs in 1994? The Plan could equally well contend that Georgia-Pacific would not have sold the division had not increased competition made the division less profitable. Or that Georgia-Pacific would not have sold the division in the absence of a decision by its board of directors to pare off operations that did not suit its business model. Yet it would not make sense to say that, because competition played a role in a decision to divest, the sale was not the “sole” cause of the fact that Georgia- Pacific no longer makes contributions. One might as well say that the withdrawal can be traced to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which facilitates international trade and thus the sort of competitive pressure that led Georgia-Pacific to divest its building-products operations. But if the United States’ decision to join the GATT means that a sale is not the ‘sole’ cause of the withdrawal, then §1384 is drained of meaning; nothing ever is a ‘sole’ cause in the sense that it is the only event in the causal chain.”

Affirmed.

10-2489 Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Fund v. Georgia Pacific, LLC

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Pallmeyer, J., Easterbrook, J.

Polls

Should Steven Avery be granted a new evidentiary hearing?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Legal News

See All Legal News

WLJ People

Sea all WLJ People

Opinion Digests