Alexander v. Udv North America, Inc.
| Decision Date | 16 December 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-72891.,99-72891. |
| Citation | 78 F.Supp.2d 614 |
| Parties | Jimmy ALEXANDER and Edward J. DeBono, Plaintiffs, v. UDV NORTH AMERICA, INC., Melvin Noel Hanna, and D. Phillip Fletcher, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan |
Doyle O'Connor, Detroit, MI, for Plaintiffs.
Craig M. Stanley, Detroit, MI, for Defendants.
Plaintiffs Jimmy Alexander and Edward J. DeBono brought this breach-of-contract action in Wayne County Circuit Court, State of Michigan, on May 6, 1999, alleging that their employer, Defendant UDV North America, Inc. ("UDVNA"), and two former managerial employees of UDVNA, Defendants Melvin Noel Hanna and D. Phillip Fletcher, breached or were about to breach a "Personal Guarantee and Legal Contract" (the "Guarantee") the parties or their predecessors-in-interest had executed in 1981. Specifically, Plaintiffs contend that UDVNA's announced intention to close its production facility in Allen Park. Michigan contravenes certain assurances of job security contained in the Guarantee.
On June 7, 1999, UDVNA removed the case to this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1441, citing complete diversity among the parties and complete preemption of Plaintiffs' breach-of-contract claim under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act ("LMRA"), 29 U.S.C. § 185(a). Although Plaintiffs are Michigan residents and have named another Michigan resident, Melvin Noel Hanna, as a Defendant, UDVNA alleges in its Notice of Removal that the individual Defendants were fraudulently joined as parties, and therefore should be disregarded for purposes of determining whether diversity of citizenship exists. Next, UDVNA's Notice of Removal states that Plaintiffs' breach-of-contract claim, while seemingly a state-law claim on its face, effectively arises under federal law by virtue of a series of collective bargaining agreements ("CBAs") executed by UDVNA (or its predecessors-in-interest) and Plaintiffs' unions which allegedly contradict and supersede the terms of the Guarantee.
By motion filed on July 7, 1999, Plaintiffs now seek the remand of this action to state court, arguing that the doctrine of complete preemption does not reach their breach-of-contract claim, and that they have stated viable claims against individual Defendants Hanna and Fletcher. UDVNA responded to this motion on July 26, 1999, and Plaintiffs filed a supplemental brief on November 23, 1999. Having reviewed the pleadings, as well as the briefs and supporting materials submitted by the parties, the Court finds that oral argument on Plaintiffs' motion is not necessary, and that it is appropriate to decide this motion "on the briefs." See Local Rule 7.1(e)(2), U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan. This Opinion and Order sets forth the Court's ruling on this motion.
For purposes of the present motion, the facts as alleged in Plaintiffs' Complaint are fairly straightforward. Plaintiffs Jimmy Alexander and Edward DeBono have been employed by Defendant UDVNA or its corporate predecessors since 1972 and 1975, respectively. UDVNA manufactures and sells distilled spirits through facilities located in several states (including Michigan) and in Ontario, Canada. At all relevant times, Plaintiffs have worked at UDVNA's Allen Park, Michigan distillery.
This case rests principally upon a document entitled "Guarantee" that Plaintiffs received in 1981 from their then-employer Heublein, Inc., a corporate predecessor to UDVNA. The document given to Plaintiff Alexander provides in its entirety:
This is our PERSONAL GUARANTEE and your LEGAL CONTRACT that Jimmy Alexander will have a job with our Company whether the union gets into our plant or not, even though at one time or another for various reasons you may have signed a union card, as long as you perform your work satisfactorily, follow our customary plant rules, and we are economically able to operate this business successfully and work is available.
This GUARANTEE is given to you because it is the best way I know of to assure you that the Company has no intention of firing you for no good reason if there is no union in our plant.
Has the union given you any kind of WRITTEN GUARANTEE that they will secure your job or live up to whatever promises they made to you?
This is our WRITTEN LEGAL CONTRACT AND GUARANTEE TO YOU — compare it to the UNION SALES TALK and what the union wants to COLLECT FROM YOU when the UNION CAN'T GUARANTEE EVEN ONE THING TO YOU. Have you seen any written guarantee from the union like your COMPANY NOW PROVIDES FOR YOU?
1 This document is dated November 23, 1981 and is signed "YOUR COMPANY," by Defendants Hanna (identified as "Plant Manager") and Fletcher (identified as "Vice President, Manufacturing"). (Id.)2
As is evident from the Guarantee itself, the Allen Park facility was the site of a 1981 organizing drive by the Teamsters Union, Local 283. Despite the Guarantees given to Plaintiffs and their co-workers, this organizing drive apparently was successful, resulting in a series of collective bargaining agreements ("CBAs") between Local 283 and Heublein or its corporate successors (including UDVNA), covering the period from 1982 through the present.
In January of 1999, UDVNA announced its intention to close its Allen Park facility and terminate the employment of most of its workers at that plant, including Plaintiffs. In their Complaint, Plaintiffs allege that these threatened job losses would violate the terms of the Guarantees they received back in 1981, as UDVNA has failed to identify any permissible basis for deviating from the promise of continued employment found in the Guarantees.
In their Complaint filed in Wayne County Circuit Court on May 6, 1999, Plaintiffs rely solely on a state-law breach-of-contract theory of recovery, alleging that UDVNA's planned shutdown of its Allen Park facility would violate the terms of the Guarantees received by Plaintiffs in 1981.3 Plaintiffs seek interim injunctive relief, a declaratory judgment enforcing their alleged rights under the Guarantee to continued employment by UDVNA, and an award of "any damages which have been incurred or may be incurred by Plaintiffs" while this matter is pending.
By Notice of Removal filed on June 7, 1999, UDVNA removed this action from state to federal court, citing two alternate bases for this Court's jurisdiction. First, UDVNA's Notice of Removal alleges that Plaintiffs' breach-of-contract claim is preempted by § 301 of the LMRA, and that the doctrine of "complete preemption" authorizes the removal of this "federal" claim to this Court. Second, the Notice of Removal states that there is complete diversity of citizenship as between Plaintiffs, who are Michigan residents, and UDVNA, a Connecticut corporation with its headquarters in Connecticut, and that the citizenship of the individual Defendants may be disregarded because they were fraudulently joined as parties "solely to destroy diversity jurisdiction." (Notice of Removal at ¶ 5(c).)4
In their present Motion to Remand filed on July 7, 1999, Plaintiffs challenge both of these bases for removal. They contend that the "complete preemption" doctrine does not apply to pre-existing individual employment contracts that stand apart from a subsequent CBA, and that they have stated viable claims against individual Defendants Hanna and Fletcher. UDVNA responded to this motion on July 26, 1999, and Plaintiffs filed a supplemental brief on November 23, 1999, directing the Court's attention to a recent decision by Judge Duggan of this Court in Beesley v. Accuride, No. 99-72760. Having considered the parties' arguments and reviewed the materials submitted in support of their respective positions, the Court finds that the "complete preemption" doctrine does not apply, but that removal nevertheless was properly founded upon diversity of citizenship.
As one of its two purported bases for removing this case to this Court, UDVNA cites the "complete preemption" doctrine addressed by the Supreme Court in such cases as Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 393, 107 S.Ct. 2425, 2430 (1987), and Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 481 U.S. 58, 63-64, 107 S.Ct. 1542, 1546 (1987). UDVNA notes that § 301 of the LMRA has been identified as one of the few federal statutes that has sufficient preemptive force to warrant application of the "complete preemption" doctrine, Caterpillar, 482 U.S. at 393-94, 107 S.Ct. at 2430, and argues that the doctrine is triggered here by virtue of the series of CBAs executed by UDVNA's corporate predecessors and Plaintiffs' unions. Upon reviewing Caterpillar and its progeny, however, the Court cannot agree that the doctrine of complete preemption reaches the breach-of-contract claim at issue in this case.
In determining whether a claim "aris[es] under" federal law, 28 U.S.C. § 1331, and thus may be removed from state to federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a), the courts generally are guided by the venerable "well-pleaded complaint" rule. This rule provides that "federal jurisdiction exists only when a federal question is presented on the face of the plaintiff's properly pleaded complaint." Caterpillar, 482 U.S. at 392, 107 S.Ct. at 2429. Under this rule, "the plaintiff [is] the master of the claim" and "may avoid federal jurisdiction by exclusive reliance on state law." 482 U.S. at 392, 107 S.Ct. at 2429. The assertion of a federal defense does not overcome this principle; indeed, even if such a defense is "anticipated in the plaintiff's complaint, and even if both parties concede that the federal defense is the only question truly at issue," the case still is not...
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...defenses alone cannot support removal. See Warner v. Ford Motor Co., 46 F.3d 531, 533-35 (6th Cir.1995); Alexander v. UDV North America, Inc., 78 F.Supp.2d 614, 618 (E.D.Mich.1999). Next, there appears to be no doubt that such a federal defense, at least, is implicated here, where the Joind......