Teamsters Local Union No. 727 v. L&R Group of Companies

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Pension funds regulated by the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act, part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), sued to collect shortfalls in contributions for 2003-2008 from System Parking, under four collective bargaining agreements with the union. The Seventh Circuit affirmed a judgment of $2,000,000, after concluding that it had authority to change the name on the judgment. The funds’ complaint and the judgment named, as defendant, the “L&R Group of Companies,” which is not a recognized business entity, organization, partnership, or trust; Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(a) states that suits must be conducted in the name of the real parties in interest. Rule 17(b) says that only persons or entities with the capacity to sue or be sued may be litigants. A “description” is not a juridical entity. System Parking’s assets were acquired by an entity not named in the complaint or served with process, so a motion to dismiss would have been granted, had the parties or the court been “paying attention.” With respect to the merits, the court upheld a finding that the employer’s audit was unreliable, having been prepared in-house, by a person without relevant experience, rather than by an independent accounting firm and being based on “murky” assumptions. View "Teamsters Local Union No. 727 v. L&R Group of Companies" on Justia Law