Arthur v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.

• Decision Date: 30 June 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-1007,94-1007
• Citation: 58 F.3d 121
• Parties: Constance E. ARTHUR; Delmer Arthur, her husband; Nathaniel Arthur, an infant child, by his natural mother and next friend, Constance E. Arthur, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. E.I. DUPONT de NEMOURS & CO., INC., a Delaware company, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 121

58 F.3d 121

Constance E. ARTHUR; Delmer Arthur, her husband; Nathaniel Arthur, an infant child, by his natural mother and next friend, Constance E. Arthur Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. E.I. DUPONT de NEMOURS & CO., INC., a Delaware company Defendant-Appellee.

No. 94-1007.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued June 6, 1994.

Decided June 30, 1995.

ARGUED: David Stephen Skeen, Law Offices of David S. Skeen, South Charleston, WV, for appellants. David Besserer Thomas, Spilman, Thomas & Battle, Charleston, WV, for appellee. ON BRIEF: William E. Murray, Charleston, WV, for appellants. Eric M. James, Brett J. Preston, Spilman, Thomas & Battle, Charleston, WV, for appellee.

Before HAMILTON and MICHAEL, Circuit Judges, and PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge MICHAEL wrote the opinion, in which Judge HAMILTON and Senior Judge PHILLIPS joined.

OPINION

MICHAEL, Circuit Judge:

In this intentional tort action, which comes to federal court by removal, Constance E. Arthur and her husband and son sue her former employer, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont). The Arthurs appeal orders of the district court denying their motion to remand under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1445(c) and granting DuPont's motion for summary judgment. We affirm for the reasons that follow.

I.

Mrs. Arthur worked as a clerk at DuPont's Belle, West Virginia, chemical plant for ten years, from 1979 to 1988. The plant manufactures agricultural products, including pesticides and herbicides. Mrs. Arthur alleges that she was forced to quit work in 1988 because her health had been ruined by overexposure to toxic chemicals at the plant. Specifically, she asserts that her immune and vascular systems were overloaded by this exposure.

In February 1989, Mrs. Arthur filed an administrative claim for workers' compensation benefits, and the West Virginia Workers Compensation Commissioner awarded her permanent total disability benefits. DuPont contested this award, and our record does not reflect the final disposition of Mrs. Arthur's administrative claim.

The West Virginia Workers' Compensation Act gives covered employers a general immunity from employee suits for "damages at common law or by statute" resulting from work-related injuries. W.Va.Code (Code) Sec. 23-2-6. The immunity is lost, however, if an employer acts with "deliberate intention" to injure an employee. Id. at Sec. 23-4-2(c)(2). If the deliberate intent exception applies, the employee may file an action for damages in excess of workers' compensation benefits. Id. at Sec. 23-4-2(b). Civil actions brought under this exception are known in West Virginia as "Mandolidis suits," named after Mandolidis v. Elkins Industries, Inc., 161 W.Va. 695, 246 S.E.2d 907 (1978), a decision that liberalized the definition of "deliberate intention."

Mrs. Arthur filed a Mandolidis suit against DuPont in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, West Virginia, in June 1990, and much procedural maneuvering ensued. The original complaint was never served. After nearly two years passed, DuPont was served with an amended complaint on March 17, 1992. In the amended complaint Mrs. Arthur's husband and infant son joined her as plaintiffs, and DuPont's plant physician, a West Virginia citizen, was added as a defendant. There were two removals to federal court (the first notice alleged fraudulent joinder of the physician) and two remands before a state court order dismissing the physician (on statute of limitations grounds) became final on February 3, 1993. One month later, on March 3, 1993, DuPont filed a third notice of removal on diversity grounds.

This appeal relates in part to the Arthurs' third motion to remand, a motion based on 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1445(c), which says, "A civil action in any State court arising under the workmen's compensation laws of such State may not be removed to any district court of the United States." The Arthurs argued that their Mandolidis action was not purely a common law tort action. Rather, they asserted that they could prove DuPont's deliberate intent to injure only by satisfying the statutory test set forth in West Virginia's Workers' Compensation Act, Code Sec. 23-4-2, as amended in 1983. Therefore, the Arthurs argued, their claim arose under workers' compensation law, and section 1445(c) barred removal. The district court disagreed. It denied the motion to remand, holding that the amended statute "merely limits the definition of deliberate intent. In no sense does the amendment eradicate the common law action itself or create a new statutory action supplanting it." ¹

After denying the Arthurs' motion to remand, the district court granted DuPont's motion for summary judgment. The court concluded that the Arthurs failed to proffer any evidence to support their claim that DuPont deliberately intended to injure Mrs. Arthur.

The Arthurs now appeal both rulings, and we review them de novo.

II.

We turn first to whether 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1445(c) bars DuPont's removal of the Arthurs' Mandolidis suit to federal court. Again, section 1445(c) provides, "A civil action in any State court arising under the workmen's compensation laws of such State may not be removed to any district court of the United States."

A.

Congress passed section 1445(c) in 1958, and the legislative history makes plain why Congress acted. Congress found that "[i]n a number of States the workload of the Federal courts has greatly increased because of the removal of workmen's compensation cases from the State courts to the Federal courts." S.Rep. No. 1830, reprinted in 1958 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3099, 3105. Specifically, before section 1445(c) passed, "the United States district courts in Texas, Alabama, and New Mexico [were] receiv[ing] a substantial number of [state workers' compensation] cases by removal and ... the district courts of Louisiana [were] receiv[ing] some such cases." Id. at 3136. In 1957 alone, United States district courts in Texas docketed 1,148 workers' compensation cases removed from state court. That same year fifty-five such cases were removed to federal court in New Mexico. Id. at 3105.

Why was removal of workers' compensation cases possible in Texas, New Mexico and a handful of other states? In Texas, for example, the Texas Industrial Accident Board, an administrative agency, made compensation awards for workplace injuries. Under Texas law, however, any interested party could bring a de novo action in state court to set aside the Board's administrative decision. New Mexico did not have an administrative agency to make compensation awards in the first instance. Instead, if an employer failed to pay compensation, the employee could file an action in state court. These suits in Texas, New Mexico and less than a half dozen other states were original actions, removable on diversity grounds. See generally, Annotation, State Workmen's Compensation Proceeding as Within Removal Statute, 60 A.L.R.2d 1262 (1958). Congress passed section 1445(c) to bar such removals. ²

B.

Because "the removal statutes ... are intended to have uniform nationwide application," federal law determines whether section 1445(c) bars removal of the Arthurs' Mandolidis claim. Grubbs v. General Elec. Credit Corp., 405 U.S. 699, 705, 92 S.Ct. 1344, 1349, 31 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972). Thus, section 1445(c) "must be construed as setting up its own criteria, irrespective of local law, for determining in what instances suits" may not be removed. Shamrock Oil & Gas Corp. v. Sheets, 313 U.S. 100, 104, 61 S.Ct. 868, 870, 85 L.Ed. 1214 (1941). States cannot by definition or characterization enlarge or narrow the categories of cases subject to removal. For instance, "[a] state could not prevent removal of ordinary tort cases by calling its common law of torts a 'worker's compensation law.' " Spearman v. Exxon Coal USA, Inc., 16 F.3d 722, 724 (7th Cir.1994). Likewise, a state "could not facilitate removal by calling a claim arising under its workmen's compensation laws an independent tort." Id. at 730 (Rovner, J., dissenting).

Our first job, therefore, is to ascertain what Congress meant by the term "workmen's compensation laws." Because the statute contains no definition, we must look to the ordinary meaning of the term in 1958, the year Congress passed section 1445(c). See Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, Dep't of Labor v. Greenwich Collieries, --- U.S. ----, ----, 114 S.Ct. 2251, 2255, 129 L.Ed.2d 221 (1994); Spearman, 16 F.3d at 724-25.

By 1958 all states had "workmen's compensation laws" on the books. These laws created state-mandated insurance systems that provided benefits to employees for work-related injuries without regard to fault. According to the leading authorities in the 1950s, the typical state act included the following features: (1) negligence and fault of the employer and employee were immaterial to recovery, (2) common law suits against the employer were barred, (3) medical expenses were covered and cash benefits were capped at a percentage of the employee's wage, (4) an administrative agency ran the system with relaxed rules of procedure to facilitate prompt compensation, ³ and (5) state court review of agency decisions occurred on a deferential basis. See Arthur Larson, The Nature and Origins of Workmen's Compensation, 37 Cornell L.Rev. 531 (1952); Stephan A. Riesenfeld, Contemporary Trends in Compensation for Industrial Accidents, 42 Cal.L.Rev. 531 (1954); William L. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts, Sec. 69 (2d ed.1955).

These authorities lead us to conclude that the ordinary (shorthand) meaning of "workmen's compensation laws" in 1958 was this: a statutorily created insurance system that allows employees to receive fixed benefits, without regard to fault, for work-related injuries.

C.

With this background and definition to guide us, we proceed to an historical examination of the Mandolidis claim and then to whether the claim arises under workers' compensation...