Teumer v. General Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 07 September 1994
• Docket Number: No. 94-1085,94-1085
• Citation: 34 F.3d 542
• Parties: , 18 Employee Benefits Cas. 2073 Edmond C. TEUMER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 542

34 F.3d 542

63 USLW 2216, 18 Employee Benefits Cas. 2073

Edmond C. TEUMER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 94-1085.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued June 6, 1994.

Decided Sept. 7, 1994.

Jerry L. Lambert (argued), Connie J. Lambert, Stinespring, Lambert, Schroeder & Associates, Flossmoor, IL, Frank A. Hauenschild, Flossmoor, IL, for plaintiff-appellant.

Michael A. Warner, Marcia A. Mahoney (argued), Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson, Chicago, IL, for defendant-appellee.

Before ALARCON, ^* COFFEY and FLAUM, Circuit Judges.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

This case involves alleged ERISA violations stemming from Edmond Teumer's layoff from General Motors and the timing of his subsequent recall to the company. The district court granted summary judgment for General Motors on both counts of Teumer's complaint, relying on a limitations bar to reject one and an inadequacy of proof to dispose of the other. 840 F.Supp. 538 (N.D.Ill.1993). Teumer's appeal requires us to consider these issues afresh and in the process address certain areas of ERISA law that have to date been left unresolved in our circuit. Doing so leaves us in substantial agreement with the district court's resolution of the legal and factual matters involved in this case.

When Teumer was laid off from his production supervisor position at GM's Electro Motive Division Plant 207 on May 1, 1986, he had amassed fourteen years and nine months of service with GM. At the time an Income Protection Plan (IPP) was in effect at GM which provided to all laid off salaried employees with fifteen years or more of service benefits additional to the basic package of layoff benefits to which all laid off salaried employees were entitled. Employees with only ten years of service were also eligible for IPP benefits when layoffs were due specifically to plant closings. GM, however, categorized the 1986 reduction in force at Plant 207 as a "plant consolidation" rather than a "plant closing," and because Teumer was several months short of the fifteen years service otherwise necessary to trigger IPP eligibility he did not receive benefits under the plan upon his layoff. In 1989 and 1991 Teumer was twice recalled to temporary positions, and in September, 1991, he was permanently recalled to a production supervisor position. Teumer originally filed suit on March 17, 1992, and subsequently amended his complaint twice. In its final form, Teumer's complaint purports to state several violations of ERISA Sec. 510 (29 U.S.C. Sec. 1140), some centering around the alleged wrongfulness of his original layoff, another concentrating on an alleged wrongful delay in his recall, and all relating to the impact of these events on his IPP rights. The district court granted summary judgment for GM. Selecting Illinois' five year statute of limitations for retaliatory discharge as suited to actions on Sec. 510 rights and finding tolling principles inapplicable in this case, the court held Teumer's layoff-related claims time-barred. The court rejected Teumer's other claim as unsupported by any proof that GM's recall decisions relating to him were motivated by a desire to frustrate his eligibility for IPP benefits.

The appeal in this case is muddied somewhat by the fact that Teumer does not merely contest the district court's selection and application of a limitations bar for Sec. 510 rights or its appraisal of the evidence adduced in support of his Sec. 510 theory. For the first time he argues an additional and wholly distinct theory of liability in support of one of his layoff-related claims, a theory of liability which is in fact much more suited to the substance of that claim (and has a potentially longer limitations period, see Jenkins v. Local 705, 713 F.2d 247, 253 (7th Cir.1983)) than the Sec. 510 theory that has been the sole legal focus of this case until now.

Section 510 declares it unlawful for an employer

to discharge, fine, suspend, expel, discipline, or discriminate against a participant or beneficiary for exercising any right to which he is entitled under the provisions of an employee benefit plan ... or for the purpose of interfering with the attainment of any right to which such participant may become entitled under the plan....

Made enforceable by participants and beneficiaries through Sec. 502(a)(3), Sec. 510 protects employment relationships from disruptions designed to frustrate the vesting of benefit plan rights or the continued enjoyment of rights already vested but yet to be partaken. See Ingersoll-Rand Co. v. McClendon, 498 U.S. 133, 142-44, 111 S.Ct. 478, 485, 112 L.Ed.2d 474 (1990); Kross v. Western Electric Co., 701 F.2d 1238, 1243 (7th Cir.1983). Section 510, however, does not protect employees against all employer actions undertaken with an eye toward thwarting the attainment of benefits; only changes in one's employment status cannot stem from benefit-based motivations. See McGath v. Auto-Body North Shore, Inc., 7 F.3d 665, 668-69 (7th Cir.1993); Deeming v. American Standard, Inc., 905 F.2d 1124, 1127 (7th Cir.1990). For example, repeatedly amending the terms of a plan immediately before an employee is about to achieve eligibility for benefits under the pre-altered plan, even if done specifically to avoid payment of benefits to the employee, is not prohibited by Sec. 510 because it is not an action taken against the employment situation itself. See McGath, 7 F.3d at 667-69. When the alleged interference is not to the "employment relationship which gives rise to an individual's [benefit] rights," id. (quoting Deeming, 905 F.2d at 668), Sec. 510 is not implicated.

Although it includes only two "counts," Teumer's complaint in substance purports to allege three violations of ERISA Sec. 510. (All relate to benefits under the IPP whose status as an "employee benefit plan" within the coverage of ERISA no one disputes. See 29 U.S.C. Sec. 1002.) Two of Teumer's charges, that he was improperly laid off ahead of three other employees into whose positions he was entitled to "bump" and that other workers were improperly recalled to work before him, involve alleged interference with his attainment of the IPP rights of a fifteen-year employee. The third, however, is an allegation that GM intentionally mischaracterized the cause of the 1986 layoffs as the "consolidation" of Plant 207 (when in fact the plant was "closing") in order to deny to Teumer and others with more than ten but less than fifteen years of service the IPP benefits to which they were already rightfully entitled as ten-year employees. This last allegation does not state a claim under Sec. 510. In asserting that his rights under the IPP were fully vested under the terms of the plan by virtue of his ten years of service and the actual "closing" of Plant 207, Teumer has identified the wrongful act that interfered with his receipt of IPP benefits as GM's squelching of the true nature of the plant shutdown. This alleged wrongful interference was not a change in his employment position--in fact, the only change was the layoff itself which, under the operative theory that the plant was in fact undergoing a closing, would have triggered, not prevented, his eligibility for IPP benefits. Any refusal to pay or denial that Teumer was eligible for IPP benefits, even if made in bad faith, did not affect Teumer's employment status and could not form the basis for a Sec. 510 violation.

And there is no reason it should. If one is in fact entitled to benefits under a plan and does not receive them for any reason, malicious or not, Sec. 502(a)(1)(B) provides a remedy: "A civil action may be brought by a participant or beneficiary to recover benefits due to him under the terms of his plan, to enforce his rights under the terms of the plan, or to clarify his rights to future benefits under the terms of the plan." To the extent Teumer's suit involves a claim that Plant 207 did "close" and GM improperly did not pay out IPP benefits to him, a qualifying ten-year employee, it seeks relief under Sec. 502(a)(1)(B). Teumer now recognizes as much, and we agree that his complaint stated a set of facts adequate to support such relief. That it misidentified the governing legal theory, repeatedly invoking Sec. 510 as the sole authority for all of his claims, is not fatal to later assertion of the proper theory under the federal system's forgiving notice pleading rules. See Tolle v. Carroll Touch, Inc., 977 F.2d 1129, 1134 (7th Cir.1992); Bartholet v. Reishauer A.G., 953 F.2d 1073, 1078 (7th Cir.1992). (In light of our discussions in Tolle and Bartholet, we disavow any suggestion contained in dicta in Pritchard v. Rainfair, Inc., 945 F.2d 185, 191 (7th Cir.1991), that a complaint that does not contain the appropriate legal theory to match the facts alleged is deficient.)

But what is fatal to Teumer's Sec. 502(a)(1)(B) theory on appeal is his failure to mention it to the district court when the time did come in the proceedings below to present legal arguments linking the claims described in the complaint to the relevant statutory (or other) sources for relief. In this case, that time came when Teumer responded to GM's motion for summary judgment. In his motion in opposition to GM's motion for summary judgment and in his brief to the district court Teumer continued to characterize his entire suit as a Sec. 510 action, never pointing out that one of the claims contained within the mass of alleged wrongdoing on GM's part, framed properly, really sought recovery under the authority of Sec. 502(a)(1)(B). The failure to draw the district court's attention to an applicable legal theory waives pursuit of that theory in this court. See Protectoseal Co. v. Barancik, 23 F.3d 1184, 1188 (7th Cir.1994); Dempsey v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Co., 16 F.3d 832, 835 n. 3 (7th Cir.), cert. filed, 63 U.S.L.W. 3001 (1994). It is true that at times we and other courts...