Terry v. Chauffeurs, Teamsters and Helpers, Local 391
| Decision Date | 20 December 1988 |
| Docket Number | No. 87-3896,87-3896 |
| Citation | 863 F.2d 334 |
| Parties | 130 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2179, 57 USLW 2397, 110 Lab.Cas. P 10,891 Thomas C. TERRY; D.B. Fields; Jim Crowe; Keith Barker; James A. Richards; Don Wright; David L. Giltz; Dale Bishop; Tony Baity; James R. Davis; Don Britt; Lonnie Davis; Jim Wilson; David C. King; Donald E. Henderson; Arthur Jarrell; Ron Ray; J.C. Greer; Gary Peebles; Harold Dyson; Ed Strange; Sam E. Callahan; George C. Blankenship, Jr.; Paul Embry; Clayton Worley; John R. Marshal; Robert C. Munsey, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CHAUFFEURS, TEAMSTERS AND HELPERS, LOCAL 391; McLean Trucking Company, Defendants--Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
John David James (Smith, Patterson, Follin, Curtis, James & Harkavy, Greensboro, N.C., on brief), for defendants-appellants.
Robert Mauldin Elliot (Pfefferkorn, Pishko & Elliot, P.A., Winston-Salem, N.C., on brief), for plaintiffs-appellees.
Before SPROUSE, ERVIN and WILKINS, Circuit Judges.
This is an interlocutory appeal by the Chauffeurs, Teamsters & Helpers, Local 391 ("the Union") from the district court's order refusing to strike the jury trial demand of the plaintiffs, Thomas C. Terry and twenty-six other truck drivers (hereinafter "Terry"), holding that Terry was entitled under the seventh amendment to the United States Constitution to a jury trial of his hybrid Sec. 301/duty of fair representation action, see Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 87 S.Ct. 903, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967), against his employer and the Union. 1 Terry v. Chauffeurs, Teamsters & Helpers, Local 391, 676 F.Supp. 659 (M.D.N.C.1987). The district court certified its ruling under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1292(b), and we granted the Union's petition for an interlocutory appeal to consider this single issue.
The plaintiffs were all drivers employed by McLean Trucking Co., Inc., and living in locations other than Winston-Salem, North Carolina. They successfully "bid" on driver vacancies stated by McLean to exist in its Winston-Salem terminal but, after moving to that area, were alternately employed and laid off. In his complaint, Terry alleges that McLean breached its collective bargaining agreement by manipulating recall procedures so as to give other drivers preferences over him. He complains that he consequently sustained substantial loss of wages. He also alleges that the Union failed to fairly represent him in the grievance proceedings he pursued to rectify McLean's breach.
The Union presented Terry's grievances to the Eastern Conference Joint Area Committee, which had been created by the collective bargaining agreement between McLean and the Union. That Committee ordered McLean to adjust its layoff policy to comply with a Change in Operation Plan previously agreed upon between McLean and the Union. Terry claims that McLean thereafter engaged in a pattern of layoff and recall in order to circumvent this ruling, and he filed a second grievance, this time with the Joint Bi-State Grievance Committee. It was denied. Terry contends that the Union conspired with McLean and acquiesced in its violation of his rights and in other ways breached its duty of fair representation in the grievance proceedings.
In his complaint filed in the district court, Terry first demanded a declaratory judgment that McLean and the Union acted unlawfully and violated his rights under the law and under the collective bargaining agreement. He also demanded a permanent injunction ending the alleged violations and directing McLean to place him in his proper seniority position. In addition, he requested compensatory and punitive damages, attorneys' fees, and costs.
General seventh amendment jurisprudence is well-settled. Thus, only a brief summary is necessary to consider its application to the hybrid Sec. 301/duty of fair representation action.
The seventh amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides:
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
The Supreme Court, of course, has long recognized that the protection provided by this language extends well beyond the common-law forms of action existing in 1791. Parsons v. Bedford, 28 U.S. (3 Pet.) 433, 447, 7 L.Ed. 732 (1830). Briefly stated, the Court in Parsons held that the seventh amendment applies in all suits which are in the nature of a suit at common law. Any uncertainty concerning the application of the rule to "mixed" suits of law and equity was resolved by Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500, 79 S.Ct. 948, 3 L.Ed.2d 988 (1959), decided after the merger of law and equity in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 2; see also Rules Enabling Act of 1934, ch. 651, Sec. 2, 48 Stat. 1064. The Court there held "that only under the most imperative circumstances, circumstances which in view of the flexible procedures of the Federal Rules we cannot now anticipate, can the right to a jury trial of legal issues be lost through prior determination of equitable claims." 359 U.S. at 510-11, 79 S.Ct. at 957 (footnote omitted). It therefore required that in "mixed" cases, in the absence of irreparable harm to the plaintiff seeking equitable relief, the legal issues should be tried to a jury before the court ruled on equitable claims. Id. at 506-07, 510, 79 S.Ct. at 954-55, 956-57.
Since Beacon Theatres, the Court has reemphasized that the presence of an equitable claim or a request for an equitable remedy should not prevent legal issues or remedies from going to a jury. In Dairy Queen, Inc. v. Wood, 369 U.S. 469, 82 S.Ct. 894, 8 L.Ed.2d 44 (1962), the Court made clear that a trial court must independently determine whether the essential nature of the claim for relief was legal or equitable regardless of the "choice of words used in the pleadings." Id. at 478, 82 S.Ct. at 900. In Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 90 S.Ct. 733, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970), the Court divided an action which traditionally was primarily equitable into its legal and equitable components. In that shareholder's derivative action, the Court held:
where equitable and legal claims are joined in the same action, there is a right to jury trial on the legal claims which must not be infringed either by trying the legal issues as incidental to the equitable ones or by a court trial of a common issue existing between the claims. The Seventh Amendment question depends on the nature of the issue to be tried rather than the character of the overall action.
Id. at 537-38, 90 S.Ct. at 738. The Court in Ross formulated a test for determining the legal nature of an issue which required the lower court to consider "first, the pre-merger custom with reference to such questions; second, the remedy sought; and, third, the practical abilities and limitations of juries." Id. at 538 n. 10, 90 S.Ct. at 738 n. 10.
The Court also applied this constitutionally mandated preference for jury trial in the context of rights created by statute. In Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 94 S.Ct. 1005, 39 L.Ed.2d 260 (1974), it stated:
when Congress provides for enforcement of statutory rights in an ordinary civil action in the district courts, where there is obviously no functional justification for denying the jury trial right, a jury trial must be available if the action involves rights and remedies of the sort typically enforced in an action at law.
The Union contends that only equitable issues are presented in this hybrid Sec. 301/duty of fair representation case, and, therefore, Terry has no constitutional right to a trial by jury. In support of this contention, the Union argues because the Supreme Court in United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 101 S.Ct. 1559, 67 L.Ed.2d 732 (1981), and DelCostello v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983), stated that there was no precise analogy to the hybrid action in the common law, the action must be considered essentially equitable in nature. Terry, however, stresses the second factor of the Ross test and urges that the issues framing the action and the remedies flowing from them vel non must be examined individually in determining whether the underlying issues are legal or equitable--that "[t]he Seventh Amendment protection depends on the nature of the issue to be tried rather than the character of the overall action." Ross, 396 U.S. at 538, 90 S.Ct. at 738.
In both Mitchell and DelCostello, the Court faced the problem of which statute of limitations applied to hybrid Sec. 301/duty of fair representation actions. In Mitchell, the Court considered the choice of New York's ninety-day limit for challenging an arbitration decision or its six-year limit for breach of contract actions. In rejecting the six-year period, the Court noted that an "indispensable predicate" for a hybrid action was a demonstration that the union had breached its duty of fair representation in the grievance or arbitration hearing. 451 U.S. at 62, 101 S.Ct. at 1563-64. Only on such a showing could the otherwise final and binding arbitration decision be set aside and the issue of the breach of a collective bargaining agreement be reopened and tried in the courts. Therefore, finding that these peculiar requirements of a hybrid action made the claim "more a creature of 'labor law' ... than ... of general contract law" and that labor policy required a " 'relatively rapid disposition of labor disputes,' " the Court chose to borrow the shorter period provided by New York's arbitration statute of limitations. Id. at 63, 101 S.Ct. at 1564.
In DelCostello, the Court reconsidered the rationale underlying the application of the statute of limitations to a hybrid Sec. 301/duty of fair representation...
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