SUN BURN RELIEF

High court rules Leder firm wronged truckers

Marc Leder’s Sun Capital came thisclose to getting away with shafting 1,800 truck drivers out of $8.3 million in back pay — but the US Supreme Court slammed the brakes on the caper.

The court, in a 6-2 decision, found the drivers for bankrupt Jevic Transportation were robbed of a chance to collect a final paycheck because Leder’s private equity giant failed to file the requisite WARN notice alerting them of the company’s demise.

Without the WARN notice, the drivers were placed near the bottom of the payout list.

When more senior creditors were paid and no cash remained, the drivers were left empty-handed.

Meanwhile, Sun negotiated a structured settlement with Jevic’s others creditors — and even walked away with $1.2 million in cash.

A Bankruptcy Court judge, a District Court judge and a federal appeals court had each approved Leder’s deal before Justice Stephen Breyer ruled that the case needed to go back to the Bankruptcy Court to be properly adjudicated.

The court battle is not the first over employee pay for Leder, better known for be- ing the co-owner of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers — and for his wild Hamptons parties.

In 2011, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. sued Sun after it put its Friendly’s Ice Cream restaurant chain into bankruptcy — only to buy it back via a second investment company after a subsequent reorganization.

The PBGC claimed Sun took those steps to avoid roughly $100 million in pension liabilities.

The pension agency’s case has since been settled.

Last year, a Massachusetts federal court judge ruled Sun was responsible for $4.5 million in pension liabilities in trucking company Scott Brass after Leder’s PE firm tried to sidestep the payment.

Sun claimed that because neither of two different funds owned more than 80 percent of Scott Brass, it was not responsible for the underfunded pension.

The two funds combined owned 100 percent of the company.

Also in 2016, several employees of Sun’s Gordman’s department store chain sued the retailer, claiming they were not paid overtime.

The chain’s owners wrongly classified the workers as management, it is alleged.

Earlier this year, Sun placed Gordman’s in Chapter 11. Critics claim a 2013 loan used in part to pay Sun a $36 million dividend led to the Chapter 11.

“Sun Capital has invested in more than 340 companies around the world over 22 years, and isolating a handful of investments where legal disagreements occurred does not provide a fair representation of our approach and business practices,” the firm said in a written statement.

“We have helped save many businesses by improving their performance and bringing them to profitability, while creating or preserving thousands of jobs.”