Collins v. Industrial Bearing and Transmission Co.

• Decision Date: 27 December 1978
• Docket Number: No. KCD,KCD
• Citation: 575 S.W.2d 875
• Parties: Perry COLLINS, Appellant, v. INDUSTRIAL BEARING AND TRANSMISSION COMPANY, Respondent. 29649.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 875

575 S.W.2d 875

Perry COLLINS, Appellant, v. INDUSTRIAL BEARING AND TRANSMISSION COMPANY, Respondent.

No. KCD 29649.

Missouri Court of Appeals, Kansas City District.

Dec. 27, 1978.

Arthur J. Kase, Joseph A. Cambiano, Rubins, Kase & Rubins, Inc., Kansas City, for appellant.

Kenneth O. Smith, Douglas H. Delsemme, Knipmeyer, McCann, Fish & Smith, Kansas City, for respondent.

Before SHANGLER, P. J., SWOFFORD, C. J., and WASSERSTROM, J.

WASSERSTROM, Judge.

The issue here relates to the vexing problem of preemption of state court jurisdiction by the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. Sections 157 and 158 (now part of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947). Plaintiff sought by his petition in the circuit court to recover damages because of defendant's alleged violation of the Missouri Service Letter Statute, Section 290.140, RSMo 1969. Defendant moved to dismiss on the ground of federal preemption, and the trial court sustained that motion. We reverse.

The facts according to plaintiff's petition are as follows. Plaintiff was an employee of the defendant corporation from April 29, 1968, until October 11, 1974. Toward the end of that period, a labor union commenced an organizational drive of defendant's employees, and plaintiff became active on behalf of the union. Defendant discharged plaintiff on October 11, 1974, and on December 12, 1974, he made a written request for a service letter. Defendant furnished a letter in which it stated that plaintiff's employment was terminated "because, in the opinion of management, you threatened a fellow employee with the loss of his job if he refused to vote for the union in a representation election pending at the time, thereby interfering with the business of the company." Plaintiff's petition alleges that the service letter does not truly state the cause for the discharge and that "the true reason for plaintiff's discharge was that the defendant learned that the plaintiff was involved in the organizational drive of the union and because as a senior warehouse employee he was in a good position to influence employee's (sic) opinions towards the union in the pre-election period." The petition prayed actual damages in the sum of $5,000 and $50,000 as punitive damages.

To this petition, defendant filed a motion to dismiss or in the alternative to stay proceedings. It alleged that on October 15, 1974, Teamsters Local Union No. 541 had filed a charge before the National Labor Relations Board alleging that defendant had violated Section 8(a)(1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, by discharging plaintiff for alleged misconduct, when in fact he was engaged in union activities and that the discharge was for the purpose of discouraging membership in the union. The motion further alleged that this charge under Case No. 17-CA-6255, had been tried before an administrative law judge, who had ordered plaintiff's reinstatement and the payment to him of compensation for losses incurred by reason of the discharge; but that defendant had filed exceptions to said decision which were still pending before the National Labor Relations Board. Defendant further alleged in its motion that the subject matter of the state court law suit was the same as that presented in the Labor Board proceeding, that the Labor Board had exclusive jurisdiction, or that at least the state court should not grant any relief to plaintiff until such time as he had exhausted his remedies before the administrative body. Accordingly, defendant moved the court to dismiss this action for want of jurisdiction or in the alternative to stay the court proceedings until the case before the Labor Board had been completed.

The trial court granted the first branch of the alternative relief asked by defendant and sustained the motion to dismiss pursuant to a finding, as a matter of law, that the court "has no jurisdiction over the subject matter of the case and that exclusive jurisdiction has been preempted federally and rests with the National Labor Relations Board and with appeals to the Federal Courts therefrom." Plaintiff appeals, charging that ruling as error.

The doctrine of federal preemption in the field of labor law has had a long and troubled history. The conflicts in this area have spawned many United States Supreme Court opinions, the most recent of which is Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. San Diego County District Council of Carpenters, 436 U.S. 180, 98 S.Ct. 1745, 56 L.Ed.2d 209 (1978). The Sears, Roebuck opinion traces in considerable detail the development of the preemption doctrine over many decades and undertakes to summarize the law in this area. As stated in that opinion, the basic general guideline for deciphering the unexpressed intention of Congress regarding the permissible scope of state regulation of activity touching upon labor-management relations was set forth in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236, 79 S.Ct. 773, 779, 3 L.Ed.2d 775 (1959), where the court stated: "When it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate are protected by Sec. 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, or constitute an unfair labor practice under Sec. 8, due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield." In formulating that rule, the Garmon opinion explains that "(i)n determining the extent to which state regulation must yield to subordinating federal authority, we have been concerned with delimiting areas of potential conflict; potential conflict of rules of law, of remedy, and of administration."

Plaintiff argues that this case does not come within the foregoing rule, because the activity sought to be regulated by Sec. 290.140 is the issuance of a service letter, which is a matter distinct from the act of terminating employment and that this service letter statute "does not regulate labor disputes or any other practices protected or prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act." Defendant counters with the argument that the basic issue before both the Labor Board and the Circuit Court were the same namely, what was the real reason for plaintiff's discharge? It argues that plaintiff cannot recover in the state court action except by showing that the true reason for his discharge was his union activity, and that this constituted the very same issue which the Labor Board was called upon to decide. Defendant concludes that this presents just exactly the type of potential conflict which the preemption doctrine is designed to prevent.

That debate is of only theoretical interest as far as the disposition of this case is concerned; for even assuming defendant's above argument to be correct and that this case falls within the general scope of the preemption concept, nevertheless the situation here is then immediately released from preemption by reason of falling within a well-recognized exception to the preemption general rule. Garmon clearly outlines, and Sears, Roebuck carries forward, not only the general rule for preemption, but also certain broad exceptions to that general rule. The exception of direct interest for present purposes was set forth in Garmon as follows:

"However, due regard for the presuppositions of our embracing federal system, including the principle of diffusion of power not as a matter of doctrinaire localism but as a promoter of democracy, has required us not to find withdrawal from the States of power to regulate where the activity regulated was a merely peripheral concern of the Labor Management Relations Act. * * * (or) where the regulated conduct touched interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility that, in the absence of compelling congressional direction, we could not infer that Congress had deprived the States of the power to act."

See also the restatement of this same concept in Farmer v. United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Local 25, 430 U.S. 290, 97 S.Ct. 1056, l.c. 1061, 51 L.Ed.2d 338 (1977).

The application by the Supreme Court of the foregoing exception most closely akin to the facts of the present case was Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers of America, Local 114, 383 U.S. 53, 86 S.Ct. 657, 15 L.Ed.2d 582 (1966). Linn, an assistant manager of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, filed a common law action against a union, two of its officers and a Pinkerton employee, alleging that the defendants had circulated a defamatory statement about him in violation of state law. These statements were made as part of literature being distributed in the course of a labor dispute and might have been found by the Labor Board to be unfair labor practice by the union in violation of Sec. 8 of the N.L.R.A. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court refused to find...