Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) fund dispute; Denial of a preliminary injunction based on failure to establish “irreparable harm”; Pendant jurisdiction as to a motion to dismiss; Whether plaintiffs’ properly appealable issue was “inextricably intertwined” with their collateral one; Breach of fiduciary duties under ERISA § 404(a)(1) (29 USC 1104(a)(1))

The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction against defendants-union-appointed ERISA fund trustees where they did not show that they would suffer “irreparable harm” without it. It also declined to exercise pendant jurisdiction over the district court’s dismissal of their ERISA § 404(a)(1) claims against defendants-employer-appointed trustees. Plaintiffs, including the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council No. 6 (the Union) and three union-appointed trustees, sued defendants in their capacities as trustees of the Southern Ohio Painters Health and Welfare Plan and Trust (the Fund), under the ERISA. The case arose after two union-appointed trustees, “among other things, voted with the employer-appointed trustees to make procedural changes that the union and its other appointed trustees contend have caused fiduciary-duty violations and portend more harm in the future. Chief among the alleged harms, according to the union and its trustees, is the entrenchment of two wayward union trustees that the union would like removed” (defendants-Smith and Clark). Plaintiffs sued under the ERISA seeking to have them removed as trustees. Plaintiffs asserted Fund mismanagement, that all defendants had breached their fiduciary duties under ERISA § 404(a)(1), and that “Smith and Clark engaged in unlawful self-dealing prohibited by ERISA § 406(b)[.]” The district court granted the employer-trustee defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint against them for failure to state a claim, and denied plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction removing Smith and Clark as trustees, among other things. On appeal, the court reviewed the factors to be considered in deciding whether to grant a preliminary injunction, and concluded plaintiffs failed to show the necessary irreparable harm. They did not show “why monetary damages would not redress their purported harms.” The court declined to exercise pendant jurisdiction over the dismissal order. It determined that plaintiffs’ “properly appealable issue—whether a preliminary injunction should issue—is not ‘inextricably intertwined’ with their collateral one.” Affirmed.