Johnny L. MEADOWS, On Behalf of Himself and All Others Similarly Situated, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LATSHAW DRILLING COMPANY, L.L.C., Defendant-Appellee.
No. 16-10988
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
August 1, 2017
863 F.3d 306
The petition for review is DENIED.
Kevin M. Duddlesten, McGuire Woods, L.L.P., Dallas, TX, Madalene A.B. Witterholt, Crowe & Dunlevy, Tulsa, OK, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before REAVLEY, OWEN, and SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judges.
PRISCILLA R. OWEN, Circuit Judge:
Latshaw Drilling Co., LLC (Latshaw) terminated the employment of Johnny L. Meadows, who worked on one of its drilling rigs, and 397 other employees when a decrease in oil prices depressed demand for its services. Meadows filed suit on behalf of himself and others similarly situat
I
Latshaw conducts its business by contracting with third parties, known as operators, to drill wells on lands the operators have leased. Once Latshaw forms a contract with an operator, Latshaw “assembles a crew and a [drilling] rig” and moves the drilling rig to the project‘s location at the operator‘s expense. Members of a crew work during one of two twelve-hour shifts. The crew “work[s], eat[s], sleep[s], and live[s] at the [drilling] rig” for a fourteen day “hitch,” and then a second crew replaces the first crew for the following fourteen days. The first and second crews alternate in this pattern until the project is completed. The crews travel to the drilling rig from their homes, sometimes over great distances, in their own vehicles.
Generally, each shift consists of a driller, a derrickhand, a motorhand, and two floorhands. A rig manager oversees both shifts and “is responsible for all facets of the rig operation, including daily operating costs, profit[s], losses, [and] rig assets including inventory, supplies, safety, and personnel.” Daily assignments come from the rig manager and the operator‘s representative, who oversees the drilling project on the operator‘s behalf. The operator‘s goals, the weather, the soil conditions, and the geology of the drilling location dictate how a drilling operation is conducted.
A crew may remain with the same drilling rig once the project has completed, moving with it to a new project‘s location or performing maintenance on their drilling rig at the “yard” where it is stored or, as the parties refer to it, “stacked.” Each drilling rig typically has twenty-two workers assigned to it at a time, although at times, a drilling rig has had as many as twenty-eight workers assigned. A drilling superintendent, working out of his or her vehicle, oversees approximately five drilling rigs for Latshaw, “frequently visit[ing] more than one drilling rig in a day.”
However, as Latshaw‘s Operations Manager averred,
[e]mployees often move around from well to well, shift to shift, and from hitch to hitch. It is also not uncommon for an employee to start one hitch at a particular [drilling] rig[,] and in the middle of that hitch be transferred over to another [drilling] rig where their particular expertise is needed.
The Operations Manager clarified that by “not uncommon,” he means “that it is ‘known’ to occur.” He also clarified that “[i]f a rig is stacked in the middle of a hitch, employees can be transferred to a new [drilling] [r]ig if work is available,” but, he stated, “[a]t no time does an employee work for more than one [drilling] [r]ig or report to more than one supervisor.” Meadows has declared, however, that he has “personally observed [his] co-workers at Latshaw change drilling rig assignments on a regular basis.”
Generally, if a drilling rig needs a part, the part is ordered from a third-party vendor and charged to the drilling rig. However, if a third-party vendor cannot provide the part in time, a spare of that part can be obtained from another of Latshaw‘s drilling rigs. According to Meadows, “equipment was ... regularly shared amongst Latshaw‘s different drilling rigs.”
Latshaw‘s corporate office is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it has three yards, which contain extra equipment and stored drilling rigs, located, respectively, in Stillwater, Oklahoma; Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; and Midland, Texas. “Rig employees are not assigned to, do not report to, and do not work out of the Tulsa [corporate] office.” The corporate office, each yard, and each rig are “cost centers.”
Preceding this litigation, Latshaw had thirty-nine drilling rigs, which it had used in project locations spread across Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas. As oil prices began to drop, fewer operators requested Latshaw‘s services. Latshaw started stacking its drilling rigs—ultimately stacking twenty-nine of its thirty-nine drilling rigs—and, without advanced written notice, began laying off its employees. Over approximately six months, Latshaw laid off 398 employees, including Meadows.
Meadows filed suit on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, claiming that Latshaw violated the WARN Act1 by ordering a mass layoff or plant closing at a single site of employment without sixty days’ written notice. He alleged four alternative theories for the composition of the “single site of employment” requirement: (1) Latshaw‘s “drilling rigs are collectively a single site of employment as they operate in a limited geographic area, are used for the same purpose of facilitating the drilling of wells, and share the same employees and equipment amongst the various drilling rigs,” (2) the “Tulsa Headquarters constituted a single site of employment,” (3) Latshaw‘s employees “worked at a single site(s) of employment in connection with a truly unusual organizational situation,” or (4) “each drilling rig operating at/from/through [the] relevant single site of employment for [Meadows] and the Class Members constitutes/constituted an operational unit within such single site of employment.” Meadows moved for class certification.
Before the court had ruled on class certification, Latshaw moved for summary judgment, asserting that “each Latshaw [drilling] rig, each yard, and the Latshaw Drilling corporate office were separate sites of employment ... that ... may not be treated collectively as one single site of employment under the WARN Act.” Because these sites each had less than fifty employees, Latshaw claimed that “neither a ‘plant closing’ nor a ‘mass layoff’ could have occurred.” The district court granted Latshaw‘s motion, concluding that Meadows had failed to raise a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether there had been an employment loss for at least fifty people within the requisite period at a single site of employment. In so doing, the district court addressed what Meadows considers distinct theories of liability that, he argues, Latshaw had not addressed in its summary judgment motion. Meadows appeals.
II
The WARN Act requires that before an employer with 100 or more full-time employees orders a “plant closing”2 or “mass layoff,”3 the employer must provide sixty days’ written notice to “each affected em
Although the WARN Act does not define a “single site of employment,” the Department of Labor (DOL) has provided regulatory guidance. The general rule is that “separate facilities are separate sites.”9 A “narrow” exception to this general rule is that “geographically separate sites” with “an inextricable operational connection“—that is, separate sites that “are used for the same purpose and share the same staff and equipment“—can constitute a single site of employment.10 As this court has noted, “two plants across town will rarely be considered a single site.”11
The regulations provide more specific definitions of a “single site of employment.”
Meadows asserts that the district court erred in concluding that he had not established a genuine issue of material fact precluding summary judgment as to whether any of Latshaw‘s drilling rigs together constituted a single site of employment as defined in
A
In his briefing, Meadows argues that he presented an affidavit in which he stated that “it was common for a drilling superintendent to visit all drilling rigs he managed in a given day,” which typically amounted to five drilling rigs, and “that drilling rigs were frequently close enough for [an employee] to retrieve a part from another drilling rig if ‘they couldn‘t get a hold of anybody till in the morning.’ ”
As a preliminary matter, Meadows‘s briefing mischaracterizes the record.
To the extent that he attempts to group the drilling rigs by the oil basins in which they drill, he has not provided any support for this proposition. Regardless, aggregating an unspecified number of drilling rigs in a basin 250 miles wide by 300 miles long—that is, a basin covering 75,000 square miles—and spread across two states, would be inconsistent with our court‘s observation that “two plants across town will rarely be considered a single site.”22
Meadows blames his inability to specify the drilling rigs’ locations on Latshaw, stating that Latshaw provided evasive responses to Meadows‘s interrogatories. He claims that “the district court should have withheld its decision on summary judgment and allowed Meadows to complete discovery on a class basis.” The district court‘s failure to withhold its decision, Meadows maintains, constituted reversible error because it “require[d] Meadows to put on evidence of information which only Latshaw could [have] know[n] ... [and] then penalize[d] him for not doing so where Latshaw refused to produce the requested data.”
It is undisputed that Meadows never moved for or requested a continuance for the purpose of obtaining this evidence. Meadows requested two unopposed extensions to the summary judgment briefing deadline, both of which the district court granted, while discovery was still ongoing, yet he never sought the evidence that he now claims he needed. Because Meadows did not file a motion, request a continuance, or state that he needed the evidence he now believes is necessary, the district court properly ruled on the summary judgment motion.
Meadows has not presented any genuine dispute of material fact as to the reasonable geographic proximity requirement of
B
”
In its summary judgment briefing, Latshaw cited
At the least, Latshaw‘s summary judgment briefing should have put Meadows on notice that he “had to come forward with all of [his] evidence.”30 Latshaw raised in its summary judgment motion that neither a mass layoff nor a plant closing had occurred because no single site of employment had suffered an employment loss of fifty or more people. Latshaw even stated that “[t]he plain reading of [20 C.F.R. § 639.3(i) ], defining a single site of employment, warranted summary judgment.” The district court did not err in awarding complete summary judgment dismissing Meadows‘s case in its entirety.
C
Meadows constrained his briefing on appeal to the two issues addressed above—that is, to whether Latshaw‘s drilling rigs may be aggregated as a single site of employment as defined by
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For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.