UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI EASTERN DIVISION

ST. LOUIS-KANSAS CITY ) CARPENTERS REGIONAL ) COUNCIL, et al., ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) vs. ) Case No. 4:19 CV 1509 CDP ) PACE CONSTRUCTION CO., LLC, ) ) Defendant. )

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER Defendant moves to dismiss plaintiffs’ ERISA1 claims for delinquent contributions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), alleging that plaintiffs failed to adequately plead the necessary elements entitling them to relief. The purpose of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim is to test the legal sufficiency of a complaint so as to eliminate those actions “which are fatally flawed in their legal premises and deigned to fail, thereby sparing the litigants the burden of unnecessary pretrial and trial activity.” Young v. City of St. Charles,

, 627 (8th Cir. 2001). To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is

1 The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974,

(e)(1), et seq. plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal,

, (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly,

(2007)).

A plaintiff need not provide specific facts in support of his allegations, Erickson v. Pardus,

(2007) (per curiam), but “must include sufficient factual information to provide the ‘grounds’ on which the claim rests,

and to raise a right to relief above a speculative level.” Schaaf v. Residential Funding Corp.,

(8th Cir. 2008) (citing Twombly,

& n.3). This obligation requires a plaintiff to plead “more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not

do.” Twombly,

. A complaint “must contain either direct or inferential allegations respecting all the material elements necessary to sustain recovery under some viable legal theory.”

(internal citation omitted).

This standard “simply calls for enough facts to raise reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of [the claim or element].”

. The plausibility of the plaintiff’s claim is reviewed “as a whole, not plausibility of each individual allegation.” Zoltek Corp. v. Structural Polymer Grp.,

, 896

n.4 (8th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). On a motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true all of the factual allegations contained in the complaint, even if it appears that “actual proof of those

facts is improbable” Twombly,

, and reviews the complaint to determine whether its allegations show that the pleader is entitled to relief.

. The principle that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. /gbal,

. Although legal conclusions can provide the framework for a complaint, they must be supported by factual allegations. Jd. at 679. Having reviewed plaintiffs’ complaint under the relevant standards, the Court will deny the motion to dismiss. Whether plaintiffs can prove that defendant

owes all of the claimed delinquent contributions or whether certain employees or work performed outside the geographical scope of the collective bargaining agreement may be exempt from defendant’s contribution obligations are not issues properly before me at this time, but instead are issues to be determined on a full factual record. Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED the motion to dismiss [6] is denied. This case will be set for a scheduling conference by separate Order.

CATHERINE D.PERRY // UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE Dated this 17th day of September, 2019.