CMC Attorney Mark Trapp Secures Seventh Circuit Win in $23M Pension Withdrawal Liability Dispute

Conn Maciel Carey LLP has notched another win on behalf of Consumers Concrete Corp., convincing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to reject a multiemployer pension fund’s bid to reinstate an arbitrator’s award that had upheld a calculation method employed by a multiemployer pension fund that deprived Consumers of any credit for its prior partial withdrawal from that fund. In the process, the Court diverged from two other federal circuit courts on this important question.

The appeal followed CMC’s earlier win in the case: a ruling by U.S. District Judge LaShonda A. Hunt that the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund had miscalculated Consumers’ withdrawal liability by crediting the company’s 2017 partial withdrawal at the wrong point in the four-step calculation process required under the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act. The fund appealed, seeking to reinstate the arbitrator’s original award, which had eliminated Consumers’ entire credit from the prior partial withdrawal.

In a published opinion, a three-judge panel affirmed Judge Hunt’s decision in full. The panel agreed that “the more natural reading” of the statute requires applying credit for a prior partial withdrawal at the end of the four-step adjustment process – not earlier, as the fund and the arbitrator had done. Under the fund’s approach, Consumers might have owed as much as $9.3 million in additional payments over 20 years; under the Court’s ruling, the amount could be as low as zero.

The decision splits from the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 decision in GCIU-Employer Retirement Fund v. Quad/Graphics Inc. and the Eleventh Circuit’s 2025 decision in Perfection Bakeries Inc. v. Retail Wholesale & Dep’t Store Int’l Union and Indus. Pension Fund, both of which have held that the prior partial credit is properly applied at step two of the four-step adjustment process. This opinion provides other employers in the Seventh Circuit (and elsewhere) a strong published precedent to challenge funds that misapply prior partial-withdrawal credits.

CMC attorney Mark Trapp told Law360 that “we appreciate the Seventh Circuit’s careful consideration of the issues and are gratified by the outcome.”

This result again highlights the strength of the representation Conn Maciel Carey’s national Labor & Employment Practice provides in complex, high-stakes workplace disputes.

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