Labor & Employment – Collective Bargaining Agreement

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Midwest Operating Engineers Welfare Fund, et al v. Cleveland Quarry, et al

Case No.: 15-2628; 15-3221; 15-3861; 16-1870

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Labor & Employment – Collective Bargaining Agreement

The plaintiffs in this labor litigation are employee welfare and pension funds (we’ll drop “and pension” to simplify the opinion). Three defendants are named. Each is a division (not, so far as we are able to determine, a subsidiary) of RiverStone Group, Inc., a producer of crushed stone, sand, and gravel. Each division is a defendant in a separate, but nearly identical, suit before a different district judge. The judges were apparently confused by the fact that each division had a separate collective bargaining agreement, but that turns out to be a distinction without a difference. The proper defendant is the company, RiverStone, not its divisions, and we shall assume it is indeed the one and only defendant in what is really one case, not three cases.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.