Coutu v. Universities Research Ass'n, Inc., 78-1165
| Decision Date | 06 December 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 78-1165,78-1165 |
| Citation | 595 F.2d 396 |
| Parties | 24 Wage & Hour Cas. (BN 34, 85 Lab.Cas. P 33,765, 26 Cont.Cas.Fed. (CCH) 83,621 Stanley E. COUTU et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. UNIVERSITIES RESEARCH ASSOCIATION, INC., Defendant-Appellee. . Heard |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Robert Jay Nye, Oak Park, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Robert E. Mann, Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellee.
Before CASTLE, Senior Circuit Judge, and CUMMINGS and PELL, Circuit Judges.
This action was brought by plaintiff, an electronics technician, 1 and his class seeking $5,000,000 in damages and other relief on the ground that defendant did not pay them the prevailing wages required by the Davis-Bacon Act (40 U.S.C. § 276a Et seq.) for their construction work. Defendant is a not-for-profit consortium of universities formed to facilitate scientific research and to design, construct and operate the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. This facility is a 6800-acre Kane County site containing laboratories, research offices, related facilities, and the world's largest proton accelerator system. It is used to carry out research in the field of high-energy physics by numerous scientists from institutions located throughout the world. (App. 50 n. 3.) The Davis-Bacon Act requires government construction contracts to contain a provision stating that the minimum wages to be paid various classes of laborers and mechanics shall be based upon the wages to be determined by the Secretary of Labor to be prevailing where the work is to be performed. 40 U.S.C. § 276a(a). We held in McDaniel v. University of Chicago, 512 F.2d 583 (7th Cir. 1975), reaffirmed on remand, 548 F.2d 689 (7th Cir. 1977), certiorari denied, 434 U.S. 1033, 98 S.Ct. 765, 54 L.Ed.2d 780, that employees have an implied private right of action to sue for wages due under the Act. Our decision in the present case flows directly from the McDaniel opinions. The complications arise only from the procedural posture of the case and from defendant's renewed attempts to establish an exhaustion requirement.
Plaintiff and his class alleged in their "First Cause of Action" (hereinafter "Count I") that defendant violated the Davis-Bacon Act by not paying members of plaintiff's class the minimum wages "required to be paid pursuant to the said contract and the prevailing wage determinations of the Secretary of Labor and the Davis-Bacon Act" (App. 2). Count I was dismissed in an unreported October 8, 1975, memorandum opinion and order of Judge McGarr. However, that order did not dismiss the remaining six Counts of the complaint.
On August 10, 1976, Judge Leighton, to whom the class action had been transferred, certified the plaintiff class. 2 Discovery was apparently stayed in February 1977. 3 In March 1977, defendant filed a motion for summary judgment. In November 1977, Judge Leighton handed down a memorandum order granting that motion. The court dated that in Count II the plaintiff class alleged that the contract fell within the purview of the Davis-Bacon Act and that the contract by its terms provides for "payment to members of plaintiff class at the legal wage rate applicable to work actually performed." In this memorandum order, the district court noted that no Davis-Bacon Act stipulations requiring the payment of prevailing wages were ever made a part of the contract between defendant and the United States. 4 The court said that the plaintiff class was relying on Article XXXIII of the contract providing that the contract did not contemplate the performance of work by defendant with its own employees "which the Commission (now the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) 5) determines is subject to the Davis-Bacon Act" and that such work was to be procured by subcontracts containing "the (Davis-Bacon) provisions relative to labor and wages required by law." The court then held that the contract failed to contain the "requisite Davis-Bacon Act specifications for maintenance of the claims stated in Count II" and accordingly dismissed that Count. Counts III through VII of the complaint were based on state claims, and the district court declined to assert pendent jurisdiction over them "due to the legally insubstantial nature of the federal claims." Therefore, the complaint was dismissed in its entirety.
No notice of appeal was filed with respect to Judge McGarr's dismissal of Count I of the complaint, so that the principal question before us is whether Count II, asserting that defendant breached contractual obligations to the members of plaintiff class, was properly dismissed. At the outset, the parties disagree on what was decided by Judge McGarr and therefore what remained to be decided by Judge Leighton. The defendant insists that only two narrow fact questions were left open by Judge McGarr: (1) whether the contract actually contained Davis-Bacon Act stipulations and, if so, (2) whether Davis-Bacon Act work was performed by members of the plaintiff class. If this were all that was left for Judge Leighton to decide, the affidavit that there were no Davis-Bacon Act stipulations (n.4 Supra ) might require affirmance of the summary judgment. However, we do not believe that Judge McGarr reduced the suit to a simple case of whether express wage stipulations in the contract had been breached. On the contrary, in dismissing Count I Judge McGarr held only that if the contract was not a Davis-Bacon Act contract plaintiff could not recover. 6 Clearly if a contract contains the required wage stipulations, this would show that it was a Davis-Bacon Act contract. Judge McGarr apparently recognized, however, and we agree, that clauses in the contract other than the wage stipulations may reveal that the contract was one for Davis-Bacon Act work (App. 25).
Alteration or Repair Work Performed by Defendant
The key provision in the contract between defendant and the United States Government acting through ERDA is Article XXXIII which provides in pertinent part as follows:
In this lawsuit, plaintiff contends that defendant's own employees performed and are performing construction, alteration and repair work at the Fermi Laboratory, so that the Davis-Bacon Act wage provisions are applicable to the work done by plaintiff and his class. We agree that if the defendant actually performed such work with its own employees at the Fermi Laboratory, they became entitled to the prevailing wages in Kane County where the work was to be performed. This conclusion follows from our holding in McDaniel v. University of Chicago, supra.
McDaniel involved a government contract clause which is virtually identical to Article XXXIII of this contract. The contract at issue in McDaniel was between the Atomic Energy Commission and the University of Chicago for operation of the Argonne National Laboratory. That contract barred the University of Chicago from construction work of a kind subject to the Davis-Bacon Act. As with Article XXXIII of the present contract, the University of Chicago was to have all Davis-Bacon Act work performed by subcontractors. 7 We held that the construction or alteration work performed by the University of Chicago was subject to the provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act even though the contract lacked a stipulation requiring the payment of Davis-Bacon Act wage rates, stating:
Similarly here, the provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act must be read into Article XXXIII when, pursuant to a contract requiring Davis-Bacon Act work, the defendant performs "construction, alteration, and/or repair * * * of public buildings or public works of the United States * * * which requires or involves the employment of mechanics and/or laborers." Section 1 of the Davis-Bacon Act applies to such work in government contracts in excess of $2,000 and mandates that an employer must pay "wages that will be determined by the Secretary of Labor to be prevailing for the corresponding classes of...
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Universities Research Association, Inc v. Coutu
...the elaborate administrative scheme promulgated to assure consistency in the administration and enforcement of the Act. Pp. 782-784. 595 F.2d 396, reversed and Robert E. Mann, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner. Harriet S. Shapiro, Washington, D.C., for United States, as amicus curiae, by specia......