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GREENHOUSE HOLDINGS, LLC,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
INTERNATIONAL UNION OF PAINTERS AND ALLIED
TRADES DISTRICT COUNCIL 91,
Defendant-Appellant. |
No. 21-6164 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky at Owensboro.
No. 4:21-cv-00029—Joseph H. McKinley, Jr., District Judge.
Argued: July 26, 2022
Decided and Filed: August 8, 2022
Before: GILMAN, GRIFFIN, and THAPAR, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
THAPAR, Circuit Judge. Arbitrators have broad authority. The question here is whether
that authority allows the arbitrator to bind a non-signatory (someone who hasn’t signed an
underlying arbitration agreement) to an arbitration award. He could if there’s clear and
unmistakable evidence that the non-signatory agreed to arbitrate that question. But the district
court didn’t resolve this fact-intensive threshold issue. So we vacate and remand. |
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OPERATING ENGINEERS’ LOCAL 324 FRINGE BENEFIT
FUNDS; TRUSTEES OF THE OPERATING ENGINEERS’
LOCAL 324 FRINGE BENEFIT FUNDS,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
RIETH-RILEY CONSTRUCTION CO., INC.,
Defendant-Appellee. |
No. 21-1229 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 2:20-cv-10323—David M. Lawson, District Judge.
Argued: December 8, 2021
Decided and Filed: August 8, 2022
Before: CLAY, DONALD, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judge. When an employer refuses to pay into its employees’
benefit funds, two federal statutes step in and offer relief. The first statute, ERISA, requires
employers to contribute to employee benefit funds in line with the terms of a contract. When an
employer breaches those terms, ERISA offers the jilted fund a federal vehicle for its breach-of-contract claim. And that claim comes within the “exclusive jurisdiction” of a federal district
court. The second statute, the NLRA, gives employers a statutory duty to continue their
contributions even after a contract expires. When an employer breaches that duty, the NLRA
provides an unfair-labor-practice claim. And that claim comes within the exclusive purview of
an administrative body, the NLRB.
Here, a group of employee benefit funds sued Rieth-Riley Construction Company for late
contributions under ERISA. They brought their contract claim in a federal district court. Rieth-Riley responded with a factual attack on the district court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. It argued
that the presence of a live contract is a jurisdictional prerequisite to the Funds’ ERISA suit and
that no contract existed. This meant that the Funds’ claim belonged in the NLRB.
The district court sided with Rieth-Riley. Finding no contract bound the parties, it
dismissed the suit on jurisdiction grounds. But the presence of a live contract goes to the merits
of the Funds’ ERISA action, not the district court’s jurisdiction to hear it. So we reverse. |
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AKNO 1010 MARKET STREET ST. LOUIS MISSOURI LLC,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
NAHID POURTAGHI,
Defendant-Appellee. |
No. 21-2959 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 2:18-cv-13498—Terrence George Berg, District Judge.
Decided and Filed: August 8, 2022
Before: GILMAN, GRIFFIN, and THAPAR, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
Federal courts have subject-matter jurisdiction in certain cases where there is complete
diversity of citizenship. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a). Here, the parties and the district court spent years
in discovery and dispositive motion practice without properly establishing the parties’
citizenship. Because we are not convinced that the parties are diverse, we vacate the district
court’s judgment and remand for consideration of subject-matter jurisdiction. |
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