Walker v. Southern Railway Company

• Citation: 17 L.Ed.2d 294,385 U.S. 196,87 S.Ct. 365
• Decision Date: 05 December 1966
• Docket Number: No. 89,89
• Parties: Roy WALKER, Petitioner, v. SOUTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY
• Court: United States Supreme Court

385 U.S. 196

87 S.Ct. 365

17 L.Ed.2d 294

Roy WALKER, Petitioner,

v SOUTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY.

No. 89.

Argued Nov. 10, 1966.

Decided Dec. 5, 1966.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 9, 1967.

See 385 U.S. 1020, 87 S.Ct. 699.

J. Nat Hamrick, Rutherfordton, N.C., for petitioner.

Jerome Ackerman, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

PER CURIAM.

Under Moore v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 312 U.S. 630, 61 S.Ct. 754, 85 L.Ed. 1089, decided in 1941, a discharged railroad employee aggrieved by the discharge may either (1) pursue his remedy under the administrative procedures established by an applicable collective bargaining agreement subject to the Railway Labor Act, and his right of review before the National Railroad Adjustment Board, or (2) if he accepts his discharge as final, bring an action at law in an appropriate state court for money damages if the state courts recognize such a claim. See also Slocum v. Delaware, L. & W.R. Co., 339 U.S. 239, 244, 70 S.Ct. 577, 579, 94 L.Ed. 795; Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. v. Koppal, 345 U.S. 653, 73 S.Ct. 906, 97 L.Ed. 1325. The question in this case is whether those decisions should be overruled in light of Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650, 85 S.Ct. 614, 13 L.Ed.2d 580, decided in 1965.

Petitioner was a yard fireman in the employ of respondent, the railroad. He sued in a North Carolina court on a claim that respondent had unlawfully discharged him on May 29, 1957, in violation of its collective bargaining agreement with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. The action was removed by respondent to the Federal District Court by reason of diversity of citizenship. The District Court overruled respondent's challenge to its jurisdiction, citing Moore, Slocum, and Koppal, and entered a judgment for damages in petitioner's favor. 237 F.Supp. 278. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that Maddox, decided after the entry of the District Court judgment, required that petitioner first exhaust his administrative remedies. 354 F.2d 950. Since our opinion in Maddox expressly stated that 'we do not mean to overrule (Moore v. Illinois Central R. Co.) within the field of the Railway Labor Act' but that '(c)onsideration of such action should properly await a case presented' under that Act, 379 U.S., at 657, n. 14, 85 S.Ct., at 619, we granted certiorari, 384 U.S. 926, 86 S.Ct. 1447, 16 L.Ed.2d 530. We reverse.

Maddox presented the question whether contract grievance procedures provided in a collective bargaining agreement subject to the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, and culminating in binding arbitration might be sidestepped in favor of a lawsuit, in light of the federal policy reflected in the LMRA of favoring such agreed-upon contract grievance procedures as the preferred method for settling disputes. The action was brought in an Alabama state court by an employee of the Republic Steel Corporation for severance pay allegedly owed him under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement which contained such a grievance procedure. We held that contract grievance procedures voluntarily incorporated by the parties in collective bargaining agreements subject to the LMRA, unless specified by the parties to be nonexclusive, must be exhausted before direct legal redress may be sought by the employee.

Provision for arbitration of a discharge grievance, a minor dispute, is not a matter of voluntary agreement under the Railway Labor Act; the Act compels the parties to arbitrate minor disputes before the National Railroad Adjustment Board established under the Act. Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River & Indiana R. Co., 353 U.S. 30, 77 S.Ct. 635, 1 L.Ed.2d 622. Both at the time of petitioner's alleged discharge and at the time he brought his lawsuit, there was considerable dissatisfaction with the operations of the National Railroad Adjustment Board and with some of the statutory features. Congress initiated an inquiry and found that among other causes for dissatisfaction, 'railroad employees who have grievances sometimes have to wait as long as 10 years or more before a decision is rendered (by the Board) on their claim'; for example, 'the First Division (which has jurisdiction over disputes involving yard service employees of petitioner's class) * * * has never been current in its work, (and has) a backlog of approximately 7 1/2 years * * *.' H.R.Rep.No.1114, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., at 3, 5; S.Rep.No.1201, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2. The Congress also found that 'if an employee receives an award in his favor from the Board, the railroad affected may obtain judicial review of that award by declining to comply with it. If, however, an employee fails to receive an award in his favor, there is no means by which judicial review may be obtained.' H.R.Rep., supra, at 15. S.Rep. at 3.

In consequence, Congress enacted. Public Law 89—456, 80 Stat. 208, effective June 20, 1966, which drastically revises the procedures in order to remedy the defects. Of course the new procedures were not available to petitioner, and his case is governed by Moore, Slocum and Koppal. The contrast between the administrative remedy before us in Maddox and that available to petitioner persuades us that we should not overrule those decisions in his case.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.

Reversed and remanded.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, whom Mr. Justice STEWART and Mr. Justice WHITE join, dissenting.

I dissent because I believe this Court's decision in Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650, 85 S.Ct. 614, 13 L.Ed.2d 580, requires the explicit overruling of Moore v. Illinois Central R. Co., 312 U.S. 630, 61 S.Ct. 754, 85 L.Ed. 1089, a case that has already been all but completely vitiated by subsequent decisions.

In Moore, a railroad trainman brought an action for damages based upon an alleged wrongful discharge without first exhausting administrative remedies. Federal jurisdiction was invoked on the ground of diversity; at that time an employment contract under the Railway Labor Act was thought to be governed, like ordinary contracts, by state law. The applicable law in that case—that of Mississippi—did not require exhaustion of remedies. The Court held that nothing in the Railway Labor Act required a contrary result.

The premise of the Moore decision, that state law was applicable to this type of labor contract, was removed in a series of decisions holding that labor contracts governed by the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, and the Railway Labor Act are subject to federal substantive law, not state law. Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972; International Assn. of Machinists, AFL—CIO v. Central Airlines, Inc., 372 U.S. 682, 83 S.Ct. 956, 10 L.Ed.2d 67. In Maddox, supra, the doctrine of exhaustion of remedies was declared by this Court to be a part of this federal labor law: 'As a general rule in cases to which federal law applies, federal labor policy requires that individual employees wishing to assert contract grievances must attempt use of the contract grievance procedure agreed upon by employer and union as the mode of redress.' 379 U.S., at 652, 85 S.Ct., at 616. Strong policy arguments were adduced in Maddox to support this general rule. See 379 U.S., at 652—653, 85 S.Ct., at 616—617; Cox, Rights Under a Labor Agreement, 69 Harv.L.Rev. 601, 647—652 (1956).

I can see no reason why this rule should be thought inapplicable to cases under the Railway Labor Act. Although the Maddox decision did not explicitly cover such cases, the single dissenting Justice recognized that the Court, '* * * while declining...