Barbe v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Inc.

• Decision Date: 27 September 1989
• Docket Number: Civ. No. PN-88-1316.
• Citation: 722 F. Supp. 1257
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland
• Parties: Janet BARBE v. The GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC TEA COMPANY, INC. and W.E. Zentgraf.

722 F. Supp. 1257

Janet BARBE v. The GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC TEA COMPANY, INC. and W.E. Zentgraf.

Civ. No. PN-88-1316.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

September 27, 1989.

Michael Lewis Freilich, Towson, Md., for plaintiff.

Peter F. Healey and R. Stephen Carroll, Reed Smith Shaw & McClay, Washington, D.C., for defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

NIEMEYER, District Judge.

This case presents the question whether an employee's state common law actions of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress against her employer are preempted by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act when the employment relationship is governed by a collective-bargaining agreement.

I

Janet Barbe, plaintiff, began employment with the defendant, A & P, in 1984 as a bakery clerk. In the spring of 1987, A & P sent Barbe a letter, on the belief that she falsified a worker's compensation claim, that stated, "This is to advise you that effective March 31, 1987, you are terminated for falsification of company document." The letter, which was dated April 7, 1987, was sent by A & P's personnel director Zentgraf to Barbe, to Barbe's two supervisors, and to the local union that represented her for collective-bargaining, United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 27. A & P contends that it was justified in the termination of Barbe because her conduct amounted to "dishonesty" as that term is used in the collective-bargaining agreement between A & P and Local 27. The agreement provides, "the employer has the right to discharge or to discipline any employee for good cause, including but not limited to, proven or acknowledged dishonesty ..."

Barbe agrees that the letter was properly sent to her supervisors and that that communication of an allegedly defamatory statement was privileged. See Stevenson v. Baltimore Baseball Club, Inc., 250 Md. 482, 243 A.2d 533 (1968). She contends, however, that by sending the letter to the union, A & P published a libelous statement giving rise to her claim for defamation. Barbe concedes that it was the usual practice for the employer to notify the union of employee discipline and agrees that the union would be justifiably upset if it did not receive such notice. She contends, however, that receipt of the letter by the union was not mandated by the collective-bargaining agreement. She argues therefore that whether a claim for defamation has been shown may be determined independently of any interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement.

Barbe also claims that the sending of the letter gives rise to damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress. She alleges in her complaint that the sending of the letter was "intentional and reckless"; that it was "extreme and outrageous" in light of Barbe's "sensitive nature"; and that it was "the proximate cause of the emotional distress." Again, she contends that this conduct is provable independently of any interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement.

Following receipt of the termination letter, the union, acting on behalf of Barbe, adjusted the claim and won for her rescission of the letter and obtained for her the option to resign or be given a leave of absence if she were able to present a doctor's statement. Thereafter, Barbe elected to take a six-month leave of absence, which was later extended another six months. She pursued no other remedy and did not pursue the arbitral process that is granted to her under the collective-bargaining agreement. Rather, she elected to file this lawsuit for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

This action was originally filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County. The defendants removed the action to this court, arguing that plaintiff's claims were preempted by § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a).

Plaintiff, arguing that her claims are not preempted by federal law, has filed a motion to remand the action to state court. Defendants, on the other hand, relying on the fact that plaintiff's claims were properly removed to this court, have filed a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment, based on (1) plaintiff's failure to exhaust her contractual remedies and (2) the running of the applicable statute of limitations for a claim under § 301. Barbe offered no defense on the merits of A & P's motion to dismiss. All parties agree that the controlling issue is whether Barbe's claims are preempted by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act.

II

Section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a), provides:

Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this chapter, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.

This section not only provides federal jurisdiction over controversies involving collective-bargaining agreements, but also "authorizes federal courts to fashion a body of federal law for the enforcement of these collective-bargaining agreements." Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 451, 77 S.Ct. 912, 915, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957). The Supreme Court analyzed § 301's preemptive effect in Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U.S. 95, 82 S.Ct. 571, 7 L.Ed.2d 593 (1962), where the Court stated:

The dimensions of § 301 require the conclusion that substantive principles of federal labor law must be paramount in the area covered by the statute so that ... issues raised in suits of a kind covered by § 301 are to be decided according to the precepts of federal labor policy.

Id. at 103, 82 S.Ct. at 576.

An example of the application of this principle of § 301 preemption is found in Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985). There, the Court considered whether the Wisconsin state common law cause of action for bad-faith handling of an insurance claim could be applied to the handling of a claim for disability benefits that were authorized by a collective-bargaining agreement. The Court concluded that § 301 preempted the state law cause of action because resolution of the state law claim depended upon an interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement, an interpretation which, to ensure uniformity, should be made using federal labor law principles. The Court directed the focus of any preemption analysis to the issue "whether evaluation of the tort claim is inextricably intertwined with consideration of the terms of the labor contract." Id. at 213, 105 S.Ct. at 1912.

Following the decision in Allis-Chalmers, when applying the standard whether the state tort is "inextricably intertwined" with collective-bargaining agreements, courts have tended from time to time to inquire whether the state court would be "deciding precisely the same issue as would an arbitrator" under the collective-bargaining agreement or whether the decisions by a state court and an arbitrator would "implicate the same analysis of the facts." See e.g. Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 823 F.2d 1031, 1046 (7th Cir. 1987), rev'd 486 U.S. 399, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988). While a preemption analysis may well focus attention on the same facts to resolve state claims and arbitration claims, that parallelism is not the characteristic that reaches the issue of preemption. Preemption applies if resolution of the state law claim must impact on the proper interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement so as to put at risk the success of the policy to develop a uniform body of federal labor law principles. If a state law remedy can be resolved "independently" of the collective-bargaining agreement, § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act will not preempt.

To provide a clearer understanding of the proper test, the Supreme Court reviewed Lingle, supra, and ruled specifically that:

state law is preempted by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 only if such application requires the interpretation of a collective-bargaining agreement.

Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 1885, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988). This principle, however, is not to be isolated from the holdings in Allis-Chalmers, supra, and Caterpillar, Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 107 S.Ct. 2425, 96 L.Ed.2d 318 (1987). In Caterpillar, for example, the Court noted that preemption occurs when "claims are founded directly on rights created by collective-bargaining agreements, and also claims `substantially dependent on analysis of a collective-bargaining agreement.'" 482 U.S. at 394, 107 S.Ct. at 2431, quoting Electrical Workers v. Hechler, 481 U.S. 851, 859, n. 3, 107 S.Ct. 2161, 2166, n. 3, 95 L.Ed.2d 791 (1987).

In Lingel, an employee brought suit against her employer in state court, alleging retaliatory discharge. The employer removed the action to federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction and obtained dismissal on grounds of preemption. The Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of the complaint, concluding that the state law claim was preempted because both an arbitration and a state-law adjudication of plaintiff's claims would involve "the same analysis of the facts." Rejecting this approach the Supreme Court reversed, stating:

Even if dispute resolution pursuant to a collective-bargaining agreement, on the one hand, and state law, on the other, would require addressing precisely the same set of facts, as long as the state-law claim can be resolved without interpreting the agreement itself, the claim is "independent" of the agreement for § 301 pre-emption purposes.

108 S.Ct. at 1883.

Lingle thus instructs for this case that in order to decide whether plaintiff's claims are preempted by § 301, this Court must determine whether resolution of p...