Stevens v. Northwest Indiana Dist. Council, United Broth. of Carpenters

• Decision Date: 30 March 1994
• Docket Number: No. 92-4092,92-4092
• Citation: 20 F.3d 720
• Parties: 145 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2897, 127 Lab.Cas. P 11,066 Ray STEVENS and Dan Streeter, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. NORTHWEST INDIANA DISTRICT COUNCIL, UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS and International Union, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 720

20 F.3d 720

145 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2897, 127 Lab.Cas. P 11,066

Ray STEVENS and Dan Streeter, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. NORTHWEST INDIANA DISTRICT COUNCIL, UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS and International Union, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 92-4092.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Nov. 29, 1993.

Decided March 30, 1994.

Thomas H. Geoghegan (argued), Robert C. Drizin, Despres, Schwartz & Geoghegan, Chicago, IL, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Paul T. Berkowitz (argued), Berkowitz & Associates, Chicago, IL, for Northwest Indiana Dist. Council, United Broth. of Carpenters.

Frederick G. Cloppert, Jr., Russell E. Carnahan, Cloppert, Portman, Sauter, Latanick & Foley, Columbus, OH, for defendant-appellee.

Before BAUER and FLAUM, Circuit Judges, and ROSZKOWSKI, District Judge. ^*

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

This case arises out of an intra-union dispute within the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC). After the International reorganized and consolidated some of the union's district councils in Indiana and Michigan, in the process effectuating changes in governing bylaws and dues levels, a local within a newly constituted district along with many of its members sued the International and that District Council, alleging various violations of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA) and the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). On successive motions for summary judgment, the district court dismissed all of the plaintiffs' claims, some for untimeliness under applicable statutes of limitations and some for failure to exhaust union remedies. Appellants challenge the district court's selection of limitations periods, its refusal to allow tolling of the limitations clock during the pendency of union consideration of their grievances, and its application of the exhaustion doctrine. We vacate in part, affirm in part and reverse in part.

I.

Like many large labor unions, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters is organized in three levels. Rank and file union members belong to locals; locals within a set geographic region comprise a district; and the highest tier in the union, overseeing all the locals and districts, is the International. Appellants are individual members of Millwrights Local 1043 located in northern Indiana. In late 1986, the International took control of the district council under whose jurisdiction the Local fell and began a process of reorganization and consolidation. The International dismissed the delegates and officers serving on the old district council--the delegates who made up the council were representatives of the respective constituent locals and were directly elected by the members--and constituted a new District Council by appointing temporary delegates selected by the International from the ranks of the locals. Also as part of the reorganization additional business agents were hired, expanding the number of agents from three to fourteen. (Business agents are key figures in the Union. They arrange employment for union members and thus wield considerable control over the livelihood of members. Business agents also receive $70,000 salaries and business automobiles from the district council.) The temporary delegates soon voted an increase--from 2% to 4%--in the working dues deducted from union members' wages. They also adopted new temporary bylaws to govern the District Council. Under the new bylaws union members would no longer directly elect business agents and District Council officers. Instead, these positions would be filled by individuals selected through a vote of the delegates. In the spring of 1987, the locals, including Local 1043, elected new, permanent delegates to the District Council. That fall, these delegates, operating under the temporary bylaws enacted by their predecessors, elected new officers. In December, the delegates voted to make the temporary bylaws, as well as the dues increase, permanent.

Plaintiffs ¹ have asserted that they complained informally to union officials about these actions from the time they were taken and were reassured that their concerns would be addressed. However, it was not until March, 1989, at the earliest, that an appeal to the International complaining about the state of members' voting rights was made. ² A second, more extensive protest was filed by appellant Ray Stevens on November 17, 1989, in a letter to the International's General President, Sigurd Lucassen. President Lucassen responded in a letter dated April 10, 1990, that under the grievance provisions of the union constitution the complaint was untimely. ³ Lucassen, however, also addressed the merits of the grievance and rejected Stevens' contentions. Stevens did not appeal the President's decision to the General Executive Board of the union. ⁴ Instead, on May 25, 1990, plaintiffs filed suit in federal district court in Hammond, Indiana, naming the District Council and the International as defendants.

The plaintiffs alleged that the adoption of new bylaws in the District Council without a membership vote, the District Council's continued operations under those bylaws, and the elimination of direct elections of business agents and the secretary-treasurer of the District Council constituted violations of the UBC Constitution and were thus actionable wrongs under LMRA Sec. 301 (29 U.S.C. Sec. 185). ⁵ They also claimed that the change in members' voting rights violated LMRDA Sec. 101(a)(1) (29 U.S.C. Sec. 411) and that the dues increase violated LMRDA Sec. 101(a)(3). ⁶ Plaintiffs further charged that the International imposed an illegal trusteeship, under LMRDA Sec. 302 (29 U.S.C. Sec. 462), by taking control of the District Council in a manner not in accordance with the UBC Constitution. The plaintiffs sought restoration of the old bylaws and voting rights, rescission of the dues increase, an accounting of and damages for the increased dues already collected, and legal fees and costs.

The district court dismissed all of the plaintiffs' LMRDA claims on statute of limitations grounds. Because the LMRDA, like many federal labor statutes, does not specify a limitations period, the district court engaged in the accepted practice of applying the most closely analogous statute of limitations from the forum state. The court selected, as applicable to all the LMRDA claims, Indiana's two-year limitations period for tort actions and accordingly found plaintiffs actions to be untimely. ⁷ With respect to Sec. 101(a)(1), the district court noted that it was bound by our decision in Clift v. International Union, UAW, 881 F.2d 408 (7th Cir.1989), where we held that Indiana's tort limitations period applied to a Sec. 101(a)(1) claim. With respect to Sec. 101(a)(3) and Sec. 302, the court was persuaded by our reasoning in Clift and the Supreme Court's approach in Reed v. United Transportation Union, 488 U.S. 319, 109 S.Ct. 621, 102 L.Ed.2d 665 (1989), that the two-year personal injury period should likewise apply. ⁸

The district court rejected plaintiffs' argument that the limitations clock should be tolled for the periods in which internal union remedies were pursued. Because plaintiffs did not formally seek relief within the union for over a year after the alleged harm, thus failing to comply with the union procedural requirement that grievance appeals be made within thirty days of the underlying incident, the court found the tolling principles articulated in Frandsen v. Brotherhood of Ry., Airline and S.S. Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Employees, 782 F.2d 674 (7th Cir.1986), inapposite and declined to allow tolling for any period in which the plaintiffs may have been awaiting union response to their complaints. Nor was the district court persuaded to recognize any species of equitable tolling by plaintiffs' claims that the union enticed them to forego the formal appeal process by stringing them along in informal negotiations. The court reasoned that not holding potential plaintiffs to the formal review process would "foster wasteful litigation of fact sensitive estoppel issues when the ultimate issue is a simple matter of procedural law that imposes a minimal burden of vigilance."

Finally, the district court dismissed plaintiffs' LMRA claim for failure to exhaust union remedies. The court noted that the plaintiffs neither filed their initial intra-union complaint in a timely fashion (i.e. thirty days from the accrual of their grievance) nor appealed President Lucassen's decision to the General Executive Board (something which they likewise had thirty days to do under union grievance procedure). The court concluded that the latter failure by itself constituted clear neglect of a mandated intra-union remedy even if the former were not under the circumstances of the case. The district court also rejected plaintiffs' assertions that exhaustion would have been futile, citing a lack of evidentiary support for such a conclusion. Further, exhaustion is not excused generally, the district court ruled, merely if any appeal plaintiffs could have made would have been to essentially the same body which allegedly had wronged them. Without evidence of actual futility at "every step of the grievance process," quoting Sosbe v. Delco Elec. Div. of General Motors Corp., 830 F.2d 83, 86 (7th Cir.1987), the court felt that "particularly where an appeal was not attempted, any presumption that it would have been futile because made to the breaching party is overcome by the policy considerations in favor of exhaustion." The court explained that "[t]o hold otherwise would excuse exhaustion in every case where a union is charged with violating its own constitution, depriving unions of the opportunity to clean their own houses and every such case would require judicial intervention." Appellants now challenge the district court's selection of limitations periods, its refusal to permit equitable tolling, and its conclusion that their...