Aaron v. Brown Group, Inc.

Decision Date15 February 1996
Docket NumberNo. 95-2069,95-2069
Citation80 F.3d 1220
Parties, 131 Lab.Cas. P 11,567, 11 IER Cases 910 Sherry AARON; Deborah D. Barber; Dolores V. Beauchamp; Patricia Beauchamp; Brenda Becker; Eva M. Becker; Alice M. Cox; Billi Jo Crews; Betty Doyle; Patty Dull; Jessie F. Dunlap; Lois I. Elseman; Augusta Emmons; Cathy M. Ethington; Carol J. Foster; Joseph E. Foster; Virginia M. Foster; Donald Fritchey; Melissa C. Galbraith; Cristel Goodman; Lola F. Harlan; Lucinda R. How; Frances Huffman; Shirley Humphrey; Sharon L. Hurst; Brenda Kissinger; Edith Krull; Daisy L. Maddox; Gladys McNew; Rita Messersmith; Anna M. Miller; Kathryn Warnol Mitchell; Dorothy Newkirk; Beverly J. Norton; Eugenia S. Plotner; Becky Jo Ray; Erika K. Rea; Helen J. Rea; Brenda K. Reedy; Debbie Rhew; Phyllis Rice; Clifford E. Robertson; Kimberly Rollins; Mary Rollins; Troy Rollins; Virginia Rollins; Jane A. Ruhl; Nina L. Scrabeck; Mary K. Sherrell; Jerry R. Stricklan; Brenda S. Stricklan; Patricia Strickland; Phyllis J. Teel; Linda J. Tucker; Darlene Vineyard; Lula D. Wesser; Patricia Wiles; Allie Willis; Joann Wilson; Thelma Withers; Cynthia Wyss; Marshall Wyss; and Marion M. York, on behalf of themselves and similarly situated aggrieved employees; Laverne Akery; Tina S. Alexander; Etta W. Anderson; Leona Asberry; Ida Fae Baker; Michael Beasley; Dennis Beasley; S. Dianne Beasley; Tammy Beasley; Patricia Lynn Byrd; Eula Mae Cochran; Dolores Colby; Beth Davis; Charline Davis; Tim Davis; Belinda Decker; Shirley Sue Edwards; Raymond E. Edwards; Glenda K. Emmons; Fritchey; Jessie Gilbert; Richard Gilbert; Millie Hardwick; Shirley Kizer; William Lane; Martha Messersmith; Alice Mitchell; Jerry Nelson; Ruth A. Parker; Sharon K. Ray; Dianna Rollins; Caroline Sharp; Samuel Sharp; Bob E. Spurgeon; Elsie Spurgeon; Wanda J. Van Scoy; Sandra White; Ruth Wilson; Sharron K. Yoakum; Martha J. Baker; Edna Cousart; Carolyn J. Evans; Linda A. Glick; Douglas E. McClendon; Patricia McClendon; and Carolyn S. Prock, Appellees, v. BROWN GROUP, INC., doing business as Brown Shoe Comp
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri; Terry I. Adelman, Judge.

James N. Foster, Jr., St. Louis, argued (Michelle M. Cain, on the brief), for appellants.

Renee L. Bowser, Washington, DC, argued (Jerome A. Diekemper, on the brief), for appellees.

Before BEAM, LOKEN, and MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

Pursuant to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act ("WARN"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 2101-2109, the plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and similarly-situated individuals, sued their former employer, the Brown Shoe Company ("Brown Shoe"). Brown Shoe moved to dismiss the case on statute of limitations grounds, but the district court 1 denied the motion. The district court then certified the case for interlocutory appeal, and this appeal followed. We affirm.

I.

WARN requires certain employers to give affected employees sixty days' notice before closing a plant or beginning a mass layoff. 29 U.S.C. § 2102(a). If an employer violates WARN, it is liable to each aggrieved employee for wages and benefits for each day of the violation (for up to sixty days). 29 U.S.C. § 2104(a)(1). The statute is enforced by way of a civil action brought by employees. 29 U.S.C. § 2104(a)(5). Like many federal laws, WARN does not include a statute of limitations.

The plaintiffs worked as unionized employees at Brown Shoe's plant in Dixon, Missouri. Brown Shoe notified William Treece, a representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, that the Dixon plant would be closed and that workers would be dismissed in sixty days. Three days later, Brown Shoe began laying off plant employees, and the layoffs continued until the plant closed two months later.

A little more than two years after Brown Shoe notified Mr. Treece about the plant closure, the plaintiffs filed this action, alleging that Brown Shoe violated WARN. They claimed that the notice of the plant closure was inadequate because Mr. Treece was not their exclusive representative, 29 U.S.C. § 2102(a)(1), 20 C.F.R. § 639.6, and that the layoffs effectively constituted an unlawful plant closure, 29 U.S.C. § 2101(a)(2). They sought wages and benefits for each day of the violation.

Brown Shoe then moved to dismiss the action, arguing that it was time-barred by the National Labor Relations Act's (NLRA) six-month statute of limitations, 29 U.S.C. § 160(b), or, alternatively, by Missouri law's one-year limitations period for penal statutes, Mo.Rev.Stat. § 290.110, § 516.380. The district court denied the motion. The court first found that there was no reason to depart from the well-established presumption that federal courts should borrow a statute of limitations from state law when a federal statute does not include a limitations period. The court then held that the action was not time-barred because Missouri's five-year statute of limitations for actions on express and implied contracts, Mo.Rev.Stat § 516.120(1), applied to WARN claims.

II.

In the time since the district court's decision, the Supreme Court has resolved one significant issue in this case. In North Star Steel Co. v. Thomas, --- U.S. ----, ----, 115 S.Ct. 1927, 1931, 132 L.Ed.2d 27 (1995), the Court held that federal courts should apply the most appropriate state statute of limitations to WARN claims. The Court specifically rejected the argument, made by Brown Shoe below, that the NLRA's six-month limitations period should apply to WARN claims. Id. The Court, however, did not find it necessary to decide which state limitations period should apply because the action was timely under any of the four possibly applicable Pennsylvania statutes of limitations and because none of the statutes (ranging from two to six years) would undermine the purpose of WARN. Id.

On appeal, Brown Shoe renews its argument that this case is barred by the one-year limitations period applicable to actions under the Missouri wage and hour statutes. In the alternative, Brown Shoe argues that we should apply the Missouri equal pay statutes' six-month limitations period, Mo.Rev.Stat. § 290.450, or the federal Fair Labor Standards Act's (FLSA) two-year statute of limitations, 29 U.S.C. § 255(a); see also Mo.Rev.Stat. § 516.140.

III.

When borrowing a state statute of limitations for a federal cause of action, our first task is to "characterize the essence of the claim in the pending case." Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 268, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 1942, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985). The characterization of a claim is a question of federal law. Johnson v. State Mut. Life Assurance Co., 942 F.2d 1260, 1262 (8th Cir.1991) (en banc ). We next determine what state cause of action is most closely analogous to the federal claim. Id.; see also Egerdahl v. Hibbing Comm. College, 72 F.3d 615, 617 (8th Cir.1995). State policy becomes relevant only after we have selected the most closely analogous state cause of action. At that point, we defer to the state's judgment about how to balance the need to enforce the statute with the need to weed out stale claims, by borrowing the statute of limitations for the most closely analogous state cause of action, unless that statute would frustrate the purposes of the federal statute on which the claim is based. North Star Steel, --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1930-31.

A.

Brown Shoe first suggests that the application of a five-year limitations period to WARN frustrates a federal policy favoring short statutes of limitations for labor-related claims. Brown Shoe claims that federal courts, including this court, consistently borrow short statutes of limitations for labor-related legislation. As additional evidence of this policy, Brown Shoe also cites several federal statutes that require aggrieved employees to file claims within six months or less. See, e.g., NLRA, 29 U.S.C. § 160(b) (six-month statute of limitations for filing unfair labor practice claims with National Labor Relations Board), and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1); Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 626(d)(1); and Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12117(a) (all stating that employee must file employment discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 days).

We find Brown Shoe's assertion that Congress and the federal courts have established a federal policy favoring short limitations periods for labor-related claims doubtful at best. We need not undertake the extensive review of federal labor policy necessary to resolve that issue, however, because the Supreme Court has held that a limitations period longer than the five years applied by the district court below would not frustrate WARN's purposes. In North Star Steel, the Court stated that "even the longest of the periods, six years, is not long enough to frustrate the interest in a relatively rapid disposition of labor disputes." --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1931 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Brown Shoe also argues that Missouri favors short limitations periods for labor-related claims. Such a state policy, if it indeed exists, is irrelevant to our task of determining which state claim is most closely analogous to the plaintiffs' WARN claims. As we indicated above, the classification of a federal claim for statute of limitations purposes is a question of federal, not state, law. Johnson, 942 F.2d at 1262. "Congress surely did not intend to assign to state courts and legislatures a conclusive role in the formative function of defining and characterizing the essential elements of a federal cause of action." Wilson, 471 U.S. at 269, 105 S.Ct. at 1943. It is only after we classify the federal...

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