Brown v. Potomac Elec. Power Co.

• Decision Date: 30 March 2018
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 17–1131 (TJK)
• Citation: 306 F.Supp.3d 194
• Parties: Gamal BROWN, Plaintiff, v. POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

306 F.Supp.3d 194

Gamal BROWN, Plaintiff,

v.POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY, Defendant.

Civil Action No. 17–1131 (TJK)

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

Signed March 30, 2018

Ralph Edward Avery, Avery Law Firm, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff.

Susanne Harris Carnell, Lorenger & Carnell PLC, Alexandria, VA, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

TIMOTHY J. KELLY, United States District JudgeBefore the Court are Plaintiff Gamal Brown's Motion to Remand or Amend his Complaint, ECF No. 7, and Defendant's Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 5. For the reasons set forth below, Brown's motion is (1) denied as to remand, and (2) denied without prejudice as to the amendment of his complaint. The Court will order Brown to file a motion to amend that complies with the Local Rules within 30 days. As a result, Defendant's Motion to Dismiss is denied as moot.

I. Factual Background

For purposes of these motions, the Court assumes the truth of the facts set forth in Brown's complaint. On June 1, 2015, Brown was hired by the Defendant Potomac Electric Power Company ("Pepco") as a Substation Technician Trainee. ECF No. 1 ("Removal Not."), Ex. A ("Compl.") ¶ 4. This position required Brown to hold a valid driver's license. Compl. ¶ 33. The position was also covered by a collective bargaining agreement (the "CBA"), and by virtue of his being hired, Brown became a member of a union. See id. ¶¶ 22, 24–25, 32, 34–35; Removal Not., Ex. E ("Davis Decl."), Ex. 1 (CBA). The CBA regulated the bargaining, CBA § 2.01, promotion, id. at § 8.09, and discharge, id. at §§ 16.01–16.05, of covered employees.

On August 4, 2016, Brown applied for a promotion to the position of "Helper–Transformer Tester NERC," another position covered by the CBA. Davis Decl. ¶ 7; CBA at 85. He was given a conditional offer for that position on October 3, 2016. Compl. ¶¶ 5–6. One of the conditions of Brown's promotion was that he obtain a Department of Transportation ("DOT") medical card within six months. Id. ¶ 7. Obtaining this card required passing a DOT physical, including a drug test. Id. ¶¶ 7–10.

On October 14, 2016, Brown appeared for his drug test, provided a urine sample which was insufficient to enable the full range of tests to be completed, and left the testing site before providing a second sample. Id. ¶¶ 7, 10–12. Around 3:30 p.m. that same day, Brown was advised by Pepco's Senior Recruiter to return to the testing site and complete the test. Id. ¶ 14.

Brown returned to the testing site later that day and entered a bathroom stall with a male observer to provide the urine sample. Id. ¶ 17. The observer used "vulgar terms" to communicate that he needed to observe the urine leave Brown's body and enter the receptacle. Id. Brown then exited the stall and left the testing site, telling a Pepco representative that he felt "sexually harassed" and offering to redo the sample at a later date. Id. ¶ 18. Around 5:00 p.m., Pepco advised Brown that because he had failed to complete the drug test, he would be ineligible for the promotion. Id. ¶ 21.

On October 27, 2016, Brown, after a meeting with representatives of Pepco and his union, was placed on "Crisis Suspension," a disciplinary procedure outlined in Article 16 of the CBA, as a result of the incomplete drug test. Compl. ¶ 22. During the course of this suspension, Pepco discovered that Brown had not held a valid driver's license since January 2016, and was therefore placed on "Decision Making Leave," the final disciplinary step before discharge pursuant to CBA Article 16. Compl. ¶ 33. After failing to negotiate the terms of a voluntary resignation, Brown was discharged on March 28, 2017. Id. ¶¶ 35–37.

On April 28, 2017, Brown filed this action in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, alleging a violation of the District of Columbia Human Rights Act, D.C. Code § 2–1401.0 et seq. , and a common law breach of contract claim. See Compl. ¶¶ 38–48. The breach of contract claim asserts that Pepco had a contractual duty to promote Brown if he possessed a valid driver's license and obtained a DOT medical card within six months of his hire date. Id. ¶¶ 40–48. It goes on to allege that Pepco breached this purported contract in a number of ways, including by failing to give Brown the agreed-upon six months to obtain his DOT medical card and failing to treat Brown's departure from the drug testing center as a cancellation, which would have permitted him to take the test again. Id. ¶¶ 42–47. The complaint also alleges that Pepco breached its contract by relying on Brown's "Decision Making Leave" status "as the basis for ... any action ... relating to [Brown] and his promotion and/or retention" because that status "was limited by it[s] terms to issues related to timely arrival at work." Id. ¶ 48.

On June 9, 2017, Pepco removed the case to federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1441 and 1446 on the ground that Brown's breach of contract claim arises under federal law. Removal Not. at 1–2. Specifically, Pepco argued that the claim is preempted by Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act ("LMRA"), 29 U.S.C. § 141 et seq. , which courts have held has such preemptive force that it converts certain state-law claims into ones arising under federal law. Removal Not. at 2. Pepco then moved to dismiss the complaint, ECF No. 5 ("Def.'s MTD"), while Brown moved to remand the case back to Superior Court or, in the alternative, to amend his complaint, ECF No. 7 ("Remand Mot."); see also ECF No. 11 ("Remand Opp.").

II. Legal Standard

A. Removal

"A defendant may remove a state court action to federal court only if the action could have been filed in federal court in the first instance." Dist. No. 1, Pac. Coast Dist., Marine Eng'rs Beneficial Ass'n v. Am. Mar. Officers , 75 F.Supp.3d 294, 300 (D.D.C. 2014) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a) ). "Courts must strictly construe removal statutes, resolving any ambiguities regarding the existence of removal jurisdiction in favor of remand." Id. at 300–01 (quoting Busby v. Capital One, N.A. , 932 F.Supp.2d 114, 127 (D.D.C. 2013) ). "The party seeking removal of an action bears the burden of proving that jurisdiction exists in federal court." Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Hormel Foods Corp. , 249 F.Supp.3d 53, 56 (D.D.C. 2017) (quoting Downey v. Ambassador Dev., LLC , 568 F.Supp.2d 28, 30 (D.D.C. 2008) ).¹

Absent diversity of citizenship, federal question jurisdiction is required to establish that a case could have originally been filed in federal court. Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams , 482 U.S. 386, 392, 107 S.Ct. 2425, 96 L.Ed.2d 318 (1987). "The presence or absence of federal-question jurisdiction is governed by the ‘well-pleaded complaint rule,’ which provides that federal jurisdiction exists only when a federal question is presented on the face of the plaintiff's properly pleaded complaint." Id. (citing Gully v. First Nat'l Bank , 299 U.S. 109, 112–13, 57 S.Ct. 96, 81 L.Ed. 70 (1936) ).

B. Preemption under Section 301

"One corollary of the well-pleaded complaint rule ... is that Congress may so completely pre-empt a particular area that any civil complaint raising [a] select group of claims is necessarily federal in character." Metro. Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 481 U.S. 58, 63–64, 107 S.Ct. 1542, 95 L.Ed.2d 55 (1987). "Once an area of state law has been completely pre-empted, any claim purportedly based on that pre-empted state law is considered, from its inception, a federal claim, and therefore arises under federal law." Caterpillar, 482 U.S. at 393, 107 S.Ct. 2425.

This corollary "is applied primarily in cases raising claims pre-empted by § 301 of the LMRA." Id. Section 301 of the LMRA provides in relevant part that "[s]uits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees ... 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." 29 U.S.C. § 185(a). While the text of Section 301 speaks only of "contracts between an employer and a labor organization," the "Supreme Court has read section 301 expansively to include individual collective bargaining workers' claims." Fox v. Parker Hannifin Corp. , 914 F.2d 795, 799 (6th Cir. 1990) (citing Smith v. Evening News Ass'n , 371 U.S. 195, 200–01, 83 S.Ct. 267, 9 L.Ed.2d 246 (1962) ); see also Cephas v. MVM, Inc. , 520 F.3d 480, 485 (D.C. Cir. 2008) ("[A]n employee may sue an employer under § 301 ....").

In passing the LMRA, Congress "authorize[d] federal courts to fashion a body of federal law for the enforcement of ... collective bargaining agreements." Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc. , 486 U.S. 399, 403, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988) (quoting Textile Workers Union of Am. v. Lincoln Mills of Ala. , 353 U.S. 448, 451, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957) ). As such, the preemptive force of Section 301 is so "extraordinary ... that [it] converts an ordinary state common law complaint into one stating a federal claim ...." Metro. Life , 481 U.S. at 65, 107 S.Ct. 1542 ; see also Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Constr. Laborers Vacation Tr. for S. Cal. , 463 U.S. 1, 23, 103 S.Ct. 2841, 77 L.Ed.2d 420 (1983) ("Any such suit is purely a creature of federal law, notwithstanding the fact that state law would provide a cause of action in the absence of § 301.").

Section 301's preemptive effect encompasses a state-law claim (1) if resolution of that claim is "substantially dependent" on, or "inextricably intertwined" with, the terms of a collective-bargaining agreement, Allis–Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck , 471 U.S. 202, 213, 220, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985), or (2) if the claim "requires the interpretation of a collective-bargaining agreement," Lingle , 486 U.S. at 413, 108 S.Ct. 1877. But "[Section] 301 cannot be read broadly to pre-empt nonnegotiable rights conferred on individual employees as a matter of state law." Livadas v. Bradshaw , 512 U.S. 107, 123, ...