Flibotte v. Pennsylvania Truck Lines, Inc.

• Decision Date: 03 November 1997
• Docket Number: No. 95-1197,95-1197
• Citation: 131 F.3d 21
• Parties: 156 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3132 Albert A. FLIBOTTE, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. PENNSYLVANIA TRUCK LINES, INC., Defendant, Appellee. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 21

131 F.3d 21

156 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3132

Albert A. FLIBOTTE, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. PENNSYLVANIA TRUCK LINES, INC., Defendant, Appellee.

No. 95-1197.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Nov. 3, 1997.

Decided Dec. 10, 1997.

Malcolm J. Barach, Boston, MA, for appellants.

Regina C. Reardon, Glenside, PA, with whom Brian P. Crowner and Bray & Reardon, P.C., were on brief, for appellee.

Before SELYA and BOUDIN, Circuit Judges, and DOWD, ^* Senior District Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Having prevailed before a jury, plaintiff-appellant Albert A. Flibotte saw his apparent victory turn to ashes when the district court entered judgment as a matter of law in favor of defendant-appellee Pennsylvania Truck Lines, Inc. (PTL) on the ground that Flibotte's claims were preempted by section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C. § 185 (1994). Flibotte beseeches us to reinstate the jury verdict. We are unable to do so.

I. Background

Flibotte, a member of Teamsters Local 25, spent almost three decades in PTL's employ. This relationship persisted until PTL terminated him in 1987 for his refusal to participate in a drug testing procedure--a refusal that, under the applicable collective bargaining agreement, "constitute[d] a presumption of intoxication." National Master Freight Agreement, Art. 35, Sec. 3 (NMFA). Local 25 filed a grievance on Flibotte's behalf pursuant to the NMFA and eventually took the case to binding arbitration. The arbitrator found that Flibotte's ouster did not violate the collective bargaining pact and rejected the grievance.

Flibotte subsequently filed a civil action against PTL in a Massachusetts state court. In addition to a derivative claim for loss of consortium on behalf of Mrs. Flibotte, the complaint contained counts for negligence, invasion of privacy, impairment of civil rights, defamation, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Flibotte alleged that PTL notified a group of 37 employees, himself included, to report on March 13, 1987, for the biennial physical examination and drug test required under federal motor carrier safety regulations; that he refused "because his examination was not yet due and because the [designated examination site] was rat-infested"; that, within one week after he boycotted the scheduled test, he took and passed a drug test administered by his own physician; and that PTL nonetheless discharged him summarily on March 18, 1987. He claimed that in so doing, PTL wrongfully terminated his employment and, in the bargain, breached various state-law duties.

PTL removed the case to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on dual bases (diversity of citizenship and the existence of a federal question). After the usual preliminaries--including the denial of PTL's motion for summary judgment--the case proceeded to trial before Judge Nelson and a jury. During the ensuing eight-day trial, PTL twice moved for judgment as a matter of law on the ground of section 301 preemption. Judge Nelson denied one such motion at the end of the plaintiff's case and the other at the close of all the evidence. In due season, the jury returned a verdict for Flibotte on three counts--negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and intentional infliction of emotional distress--and awarded him $625,000 in damages.

Like the mills of the gods, the mills of the judiciary sometimes grind exceedingly slow. On November 20, 1991, PTL made a timely motion for judgment as a matter of law, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b), in which it again hawked section 301 preemption. The motion sat unresolved when, in April of 1992, PTL sought the bankruptcy court's protection under Chapter 11, thus triggering an automatic stay of proceedings in the district court. See 11 U.S.C. § 362 (1990). Some seventeen months later, the bankruptcy court confirmed a plan of reorganization. PTL's emergence from the toils of bankruptcy cleared the way for resumption of the district court proceedings. By then, however, Judge Nelson had become disabled and a considerable period of time elapsed before the case was reassigned and a new jurist, Judge Gertner, took up the outstanding motion. She eventually granted it, provoking this appeal.

Flibotte's objections possess both procedural and substantive dimensions. First, he argues that Judge Gertner erred when she purposed to revisit issues previously decided by Judge Nelson. Second, he assails the merits of her determination that section 301 preempts his state-law claims. We address each of these objections in turn.

II. Law of the Case

Flibotte's procedural objection has a chameleonic quality. In one iteration, it implies that Judge Gertner improperly made fact-based determinations contrary to those made by her predecessor and in flagrant disregard of the truism that the judge who actually presides over a trial is in a superior position to make such determinations. Without engaging the myriad counter-precedential assumptions that are essential to this objection, it suffices to say that the legal framework in which motions for judgment as a matter of law exist does not permit courts confronted with such motions to engage in differential factfinding, see Veranda Beach Club Ltd. Partnership v. Western Sur. Co., 936 F.2d 1364, 1383-84 (1st Cir.1991) (discussing applicable standards), and there is no indication here that Judge Gertner disobeyed these guidelines.

Flibotte's next iteration of his procedural objection is no more rewarding. He asserts that a court is bound by its own precedents, and that, therefore, Judge Gertner was incompetent to revise Judge Nelson's answers to the legal questions posed by the case. This objection is an apparent effort to employ the venerable law of the case doctrine, which states in the large that, unless corrected by an appellate tribunal, a legal decision made at one stage of a civil or criminal case constitutes the law of the case throughout the pendency of the litigation. See, e.g., United States v. Bell, 988 F.2d 247, 250 (1st Cir.1993); Abbadessa v. Moore Bus. Forms, Inc., 987 F.2d 18, 22 (1st Cir.1993).

This principle is of no real assistance to Flibotte. Although temporally distant from each other, Judge Nelson's denial of PTL's motions for summary judgment and for judgment as a matter of law, on the one hand, and Judge Gertner's decision to grant PTL's post-verdict motion for judgment as a matter of law, on the other hand, occurred in the context of a single trial of a single case in a single court, with no intervening appeal. Judge Nelson and Judge Gertner, therefore, play the same institutional role for the purpose of this litigation.

That confluence of judicial identities is dispositive here. "Under the law of the case doctrine, as it is commonly understood, it is not improper for a court to depart from a prior holding if convinced that it is clearly erroneous and would work a manifest injustice." Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 619 n. 8, 103 S.Ct. 1382, 1391 n. 8, 75 L.Ed.2d 318 (1983). Moreover, it is perfectly appropriate for a judge to refuse to direct a verdict, permit the jury to consider a case, and thereafter to grant judgment notwithstanding the verdict. See Talbot-Windsor Corp. v. Miller, 309 F.2d 68, 69 (1st Cir.1962). Accordingly, Judge Nelson would have been free to grant PTL the relief that it sought in its post-verdict motion notwithstanding his previous rulings; and Judge Gertner, who stood in his shoes, was at liberty to do the same. Consequently, Judge Gertner did not arrogate unto herself any undue authority when she entertained PTL's renewed post-verdict motion for judgment as a matter of law and reached a different conclusion than had her co-equal predecessor.

III. Section 301 Preemption

Having found no procedural glitch, we turn to Judge Gertner's decision. We review a ruling on a motion for judgment as a matter of law de novo, applying the identical legal standards that constrain the district court. See Colasanto v. Life Ins. Co. of N. Am., 100 F.3d 203, 208 (1st Cir.1996). Accordingly, "the evidence and all reasonable inferences extractable therefrom must be examined in the light most favorable to the nonmovant and a [judgment as a matter of law] should be granted only when the evidence, viewed from this perspective, is such that reasonable persons could reach but one conclusion." Veranda Beach, 936 F.2d at 1383-84. ¹

A. The Legal Landscape

Read literally, section 301 confers federal court jurisdiction over "[s]uits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce." Over the years, however, the Supreme Court has placed a heavy gloss on this language, beginning with its holding that the statute empowers federal courts to craft federal common law reasonably necessary to effectuate the objectives of section 301. See Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 451, 77 S.Ct. 912, 915, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957). This substantive authority to declare federal common law soon formed the basis for an emerging jurisprudence of preemption. See Martin v. Shaw's Supermarkets, Inc., 105 F.3d 40, 41-42 (1st Cir.) (recounting development of section 301 preemption), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 69, 139 L.Ed.2d 30 (1997). Today, labor-law preemption casts a relatively wide net. Thus, section 301 preempts a state-law claim "if the resolution of [that] claim depends on the meaning of a collective-bargaining agreement." Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 405-06, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 1881, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988).

This rule is not without limitations. The Court has cautioned that "purely factual questions about an employee's conduct or an employer's conduct and motives do not require a court to interpret any term of a collective-bargaining agreement." Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. v. Norris, 512...