3d Cir. on FLSA successor-in-interest liability. Or, as I like to put it, “No Blog Hits” Day

I was on such a roll this week. 

You guys were digging the heck out of my peeing in the breakroom post, David Crosby the alcoholic, and the one about a supervisor offering cash to sleep with an employee’s wife.

You know who even read that last one? Scan down to the blog comments. Yep, that’s a comment from the plaintiff himself. OMG!!!

But, can you hear the crickets now? I mean, cue the tumbleweed, because if there’s anything that grinds momentum to a halt here at The Employer Handbook, it’s a post about the Fair Labor Standards Act.

But, since the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which is in my hood and surely knows what a jawn is without me having to hyperlink that jawn, issued this precedential opinion on FLSA successor-in-interest liability yesterday. So, it’s the least I could do.

Well, the least I could do is cut right to the chase. So, here’s the money shot:

“The imposition of successor liability will often be necessary to achieve the statutory goals [of the National Labor Relations Act and Title VII] because the workers will often be unable to head off a corporate sale by their employer aimed at extinguishing the employer’s liability to them. This logic extends to suits to enforce the Fair Labor Standards Act….In the absence of successor liability, a violator of the [FLSA] could escape liability, or at least make relief much more difficult to obtain, by selling its assets without an assumption of liabilities by the buyer (for such an assumption would reduce the purchase price by imposing a cost on the buyer) and then dissolving.”

So, buyer beware and either pay less for the acquired company or —

Hey, is anyone still here? Bueller?