Koppal v. Transcontinental & Western Air

• Decision Date: 10 November 1952
• Docket Number: No. 14473.,14473.
• Citation: 199 F.2d 117
• Parties: KOPPAL v. TRANSCONTINENTAL & WESTERN AIR, Inc.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

199 F.2d 117 (1952)

KOPPAL v. TRANSCONTINENTAL & WESTERN AIR, Inc.

No. 14473.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

October 6, 1952.

Rehearing Denied November 10, 1952.

Ray D. Jones, Jr., and Fred J. Freel, Kansas City, Mo., for appellant.

Ruby D. Garrett and Harold L. Warner, Jr., Kansas City, Mo., for appellee.

Before JOHNSEN, RIDDICK and COLLET, Circuit Judges.

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge.

An employee sued to recover damages from his employer for wrongful discharge. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the employee for $7500. The court, on motion by the employer for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or in the alternative for a new trial, entered an order setting aside the verdict, giving judgment for the employer, and further providing that, if this judgment was reversed on appeal, then the employer was granted a new trial unless the employee filed a remittitur of $6200. The employee has appealed.

The action was one predicated upon breach of the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement made between the employer and a labor union, under the Railway Labor Act, Title II, 45 U.S.C.A. § 181 et seq. The employer was subject to the Act as a carrier by air. The labor union was the bargaining agent pursuant to the Act of the class of employees of the carrier to which the plaintiff belonged, although plaintiff himself was not a member of the union.

The claimed breach consisted (1) in having deprived plaintiff, "without just cause or reason," of the rights of job, seniority, pension and other fringe benefits, as alleged to be impliedly vested in him by the agreement, and (2) in having discharged him "without a fair hearing," as expressly provided for in the agreement.

The agreement did not prescribe what should constitute grounds for discharging an employee and thereby depriving him of the rights existing in his favor under the agreement. It accordingly left the question of cause subject to general legal standard within the realities of the contract situation. As to process, however, there was an express provision that a discharge could not be made "without a fair hearing before a designated representative of the Company other than the one bringing complaint against the employee" and that "At a reasonable time prior to the hearing, such employee and his duly authorized representative will be apprised, in writing, of the precise charge and given a reasonable opportunity to secure the presence of necessary witnesses."

Plaintiff was discharged for abuse of the carrier's sick-leave privileges, which entitled employees who had completed six months or more of continuous service to be absent from work for illness, without loss of pay, to the extent of one day for each month of continuous service, cumulative up to a total of 60 days at a time. The contract implicationally provided that "The employees covered by this Agreement, and the Union, recognize an obligation to be truthful and honest and to prevent unnecessary absences and other abuses of sick leave privileges."

The manager of the carrier's "Overhaul Base" in Kansas City, where plaintiff was employed, had accused plaintiff of absenting himself from his work and reporting that he was ill, with intention to collect sick-leave benefits, when he was not in fact ill but was merely taking time off to serve his own convenience. Another employee, who was a friend of plaintiff, had at the same time absented himself and reported illness. When a representative from the employer's "Industrial Relations Department" made an unexpected call at plaintiff's home, plaintiff himself answered the door, and the automobile of the other employee was found standing in front of plaintiff's house.

Upon the return of the two employees to work, they were directed to go to the manager's office, where they were interrogated about the reason for their absence. Both insisted that they had been absent because they were not feeling well enough to work, but they subsequently admitted that, notwithstanding their alleged illness, they had used the occasion to prepare for an examination, which was to be held within a few days, as a qualification for a higher position. Plaintiff also later admitted that a third employee had joined them in their preparation efforts, but he refused to disclose the name of this employee and asserted that the meeting had not been planned but was purely one of coincidence. The manager declared at the close of the interview that he thought that the two employees were lying about their alleged illness and said that he was going to suspend them until a hearing could be held to air the matter, the time for which he fixed as the second day following.

The two employees appeared at the time set, and an informal hearing was held before the "manager of Line Maintenance." The record shows, however, that the evidence produced at this hearing was such that, if the hearing was not otherwise subject to impeachment — a question which will be later considered — anyone called upon to hear and weigh the testimony and circumstances could properly conclude and find therefrom that plaintiff had not been honest in this claim of illness and had been guilty of abusing his sick-leave privileges. Nor upon the evidence introduced on the court trial did there exist any basis for a jury to declare that this abuse had not constituted the actual reason for the discharge, such as might perhaps be entitled to be done in some equivocal situation of employer motive as related to the purposes of the Act or the provisions of the agreement. And since, as suggested above, the contract had left the question of cause as one of general legal standard applied to the realities of the contract situation, it also would have to be held that plaintiff's dishonest abuse of his sick-leave privileges, as an existing fact and without improper pretext in its use by the employer, constituted in the situation as a matter of law a sufficient ground for his discharge.

Plaintiff was accordingly, we think, not entitled to have a jury resolve whether he was discharged "without just cause or reason," because, as indicated, the evidence legally required the holding that he was discharged for dishonest abuse of the sick-leave privilege, and the contract had left that ground, under proper motive, as a sufficient legal basis for the action which the employer took. Thus, any submission to the jury on that question was in the present situation simply giving the jury an artificial opportunity to veto managerial prerogative and its legitimate exercise.

Plaintiff's second claim of contract breach, as previously noted, was that the discharge had been made "without a fair hearing." In this connection we repeat the provision of the agreement that a discharge should not be made "without a fair hearing before a designated representative of the Company other than the one bringing complaint against the employee" and that "At a reasonable time prior to the hearing, such employee and his duly authorized representative will be apprised, in writing, of the precise charge and given a reasonable opportunity to secure the presence of necessary witnesses."

In so far as the term "fair hearing" in its use in this provision could be said to imply that a discharge should depend, not simply upon whether cause might exist in fact, but rather upon whether proof of the existence of such cause was sufficiently made against the employee at a hearing as to be capable of inducing and to have constituted the basis of the employer's action, what we have said above is here equally controlling of plaintiff's lack of right on the evidence to have these questions tested by a jury as a matter of "fair hearing". No more on this particular aspect than on the general question considered above, does the evidence afford any basis for a jury to say that sufficient cause legally for discharge was not proved or that the employer's action was not taken on the basis of this proof. It should be added also that the question of bias or prejudice in the hearing officer as an element of "fair hearing" is not here involved.

If therefore any jury question existed in the situation in relation to the contractual provision for "fair hearing", it would only be because of the impossibility of saying as a matter of law that all of the processes which the agreement required to underlie the hearing, and which accordingly constituted incidents thereof, had been properly complied with, and so a legal doubt could exist as to the significance of such omission or deviation as had occurred, which the employee was entitled to have appraised in relation to whether on all the circumstances there had been a breach of the prescription for "fair hearing" with its intended incidents, and whether the employee had been prejudiced thereby.

Evidence is contained in the record from which it properly could be found as a fact that no other notice was given plaintiff of the hearing except the oral statement of the manager, after his interview with the two employees, fixing the second day following for an airing of the matter; that the hearing was set for the manager's office and no intention was expressed to have it held by some other officer — another officer being required under the contract only in relation to a discharge proceeding; that no suggestion was made to plaintiff that his job might be in jeopardy or that it would be advisable for him to have any witnesses present who could corroborate his story as to his illness; that the impression which plaintiff received from all the circumstances was simply that the session was to constitute a fuller airing of the situation, or, as he termed it, "a scare session;" that he thus did not undertake to get the union or anyone else to represent him or to have witnesses present who, he claimed, could have substantiated the fact that he actually was ill and had not lied about the reason for his absence; that, while a representative of the...