THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
OCTOBER TERM 1994-1995
NORTH STAR STEEL CO.
v.
THOMAS
515 U.S. 29
1995
* * *
SYLLABUS: NORTH STAR STEEL CO. v. THOMAS et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the third circuit
No. 94-834. Argued April 25, 1995-Decided May 30, 1995[1]
Respondents filed separate claims under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), which authorizes a civil enforcement action by aggrieved employees or their union against a covered employer who fails to give 60 days notice of a plant closing or mass layoff, but provides no limitations period for such an action. In rejecting petitioner employer's contention that the statute of limitations had run, the District Court in Crown Cork held that the source of the limitations period for WARN suits is state law and that respondent union's suit was timely under any of the arguably applicable Pennsylvania statutes. In North Star, however, another District Court granted summary judgment for petitioner employer, holding respondent employees' suit barred under a limitations period borrowed from the National Labor Relations Act, which the court believed was ``more analogous'' to WARN than any state law. The Third Circuit consolidated the cases and held that a WARN limitations period should be borrowed from state, not federal, law, reversing in North Star and affirming in Crown Cork.
Held: State law is the proper source of the limitations period for civil actions brought to enforce WARN. Pp. 3-7.
(a) Where a federal statute fails to provide any limitations period for a new cause of action, this Court's longstanding and settled practice has been to borrow the limitations period from the most closely analogous state statute. A closely circumscribed and narrow exception to this general rule allows borrowing from elsewhere in federal law when the arguably relevant state limitations periods would frustrate or interfere with the implementation of national policies or be at odds with the purpose or operation of federal substantive law. See, e.g., DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 161, 172. Pp. 3-5.
(b) This case falls squarely inside the general rule, not the exception. The presumption that state law will be the source of a missing federal limitations period was already longstanding when WARN was passed in 1988, justifying the assumption that Congress intended by its silence that courts borrow state law. Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U.S. 143, 147. Accordingly, since the complaints in both of these cases were timely even under the shortest of the potentially-applicable Pennsylvania statutes of limitations, there is no need to go beyond the Court of Appeals's decision to choose the best of the four, and it is enough to say here that none of these statutes would be at odds with WARN's purpose or operation, or frustrate or interfere with the intent behind it. DelCostello, supra, at 166, distinguished. Although petitioners are right that the adoption of state limitations periods can result in variations from State to State and encourage forum shopping, these are just the costs of the general rule itself, and nothing about WARN makes them exorbitant. Agency Holding Corp., supra, at 149, 153-154, distinguished. Because a state counterpart provides a limitations period without frustrating consequences here, it is simply beside the point that a perfectly good federal analogue exists. Pp. 5-7.
32 F.3d 53, affirmed.
Souter, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.
[1] Together with No. 94-835, Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc. v. United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC, also on certiorari to the same court.
CONCURRING OPINION: Opinion of Scalia, J. (concurring)
on writs of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the third circuit
[May 30, 1995]
Justice Scalia, concurring in the judgment.
I remain of the view that when Congress has not prescribed a limitations period to govern a cause of action that it has created, the Court should apply the appropriate state statute of limitations, or, if doing so would frustrate the purposes of the federal enactment, no limitations period at all. See Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U.S. 143, 157-170 (1987) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment); see also Reed v. United Transportation Union, 488 U.S. 319, 334 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). The rule first announced in DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 172 (1983), that a federal limitations period should be selected when it presents a "closer analogy" to the federal cause of action and is "significantly more appropriate," I find to be not only erroneous but unworkable. If the "closer analogy" part of this is to be taken seriously, the federal statute would end up applying in some States but not in others; and the "significantly more appropriate" part is meaningless, since in all honesty a uniform nationwide limitations period for a federal cause of action is always significantly more appropriate.
I have joined in applying to a so-called "implied" cause of action the limitations period contained in the federal statute out of which the cause of action had been judicially created. See Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, 501 U.S. 350, 364-366 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). But the cause of action at issue here was created not by us, but by Congress. Accordingly, in my view, the appropriate state statute of limitations governs.
Because none of the state statutes arguably applicable here would frustrate the purposes of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 2101 et seq., and because the WARN actions before us are timely under even the shortest of those statutes, I concur in the Court's judgment.
TOC: Syllabus > Scalia, J. (concurring) >
CASE STATISTICSCASES: 501 U.S. 350; 488 U.S. 319; 483 U.S. 143; 462 U.S. 151; 32 F. 3d 53;
STATUTES: 29 U.S.C. Sec. 2101;
© Techlaw Reporter - SK Publishing -2001
No Claim to Original Govt. Works