Sanders, et al. v. Kohler Company, No. 10-1848 (8th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseAppellants appealed from an order granting summary judgment to appellee on a claim arising under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act ("WARN"), 29 U.S.C. 21202, and dismissing without prejudice supplemental state law claims. Appellants alleged that appellee hired them as temporary workers in the midst of a strike and then summarily dismissed them at the strike's conclusion without providing the notice required under the WARN Act. The court held that the district court properly weighed the evidence when determining how to classify the striking workers and did not err in determining that appellants had failed to provided a viable legal theory on which to base its calculations. Moreover, though appellants complained that it was unrealistic to think that 32 striking workers would depart voluntarily, they produced no evidence supporting an alternative scenario. Therefore, appellants' conclusory statements on these issues failed to create a genuine issue of material fact and did not preclude the grant of summary judgment. The court also rejected appellants' claim that the district court erred in considering and rejecting only two of the four theories it proffered where the district court may not have addressed each theory they put forth, but it clearly rejected them all by concluding that the reduction in force was insufficient to satisfy the numerosity threshold. Therefore, the court agreed with the district court that the various theories offered by appellants failed, as a matter of law, to establish that a mass layoff occurred that would trigger notice requirements of the WARN Act. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.
Court Description: Civil case - Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Employees who are fired but replaced are not part of a reduction in force and do not count as part of the aggregate number of employee layoffs that must be met to satisfy the numerosity thresholds of Section 2101(a)(3) of the WARN Act; district court did not err in concluding that the various theories offered by plaintiffs failed, as a matter of law, to establish that a mass layoff occurred that would trigger the notice requirements of the WARN Act.
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