Frye v. Pioneer Logging Machinery, Inc., Civ. A. No. 81-2594-15.

• Decision Date: 14 January 1983
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 81-2594-15.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina
• Parties: Shelby Jean FRYE, Plaintiff, v. PIONEER LOGGING MACHINERY, INC., Defendant.

555 F. Supp. 730

Shelby Jean FRYE, Plaintiff, v. PIONEER LOGGING MACHINERY, INC., Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 81-2594-15.

United States District Court, D. South Carolina, Columbia Division.

January 14, 1983.

James L. Bell, Brian Dumas, Columbia, S.C., for plaintiff.

Kenneth L. Childs, David T. Duff, Emma Ruth St. Pierre, Childs, Duff & St. Pierre, P.A., Columbia, S.C., for defendant.

ORDER

HAMILTON, District Judge.

In this action before the court¹ pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., plaintiff sought recovery against her employer, defendant Pioneer Logging Machinery, Inc. (hereinafter "Pioneer"), for Pioneer's failure to reinstate plaintiff to her position after she had taken a maternity leave of absence. Plaintiff also asserted in her second amended complaint four state law claims against Pioneer and/or LeGrand White and Sara Rabon, both employees and agents of Pioneer who were originally named as defendants, and alleged that this court had jurisdiction over such claims based on the doctrine of pendent jurisdiction. Although the question of the court's jurisdiction to hear plaintiff's state claims was addressed in defendants' motion for partial summary judgment, the court also raised the jurisdictional question sua sponte, thus obviating any need to respond to plaintiff's contention that defendants had waived their right to challenge the court's jurisdiction.

On November 18, 1982, the court concluded that it was without power to adjudicate plaintiff's state law claims and that, even assuming that it had jurisdiction, as a matter of discretion, it would decline to exercise such power. Accordingly, for the reasons set forth and the authority cited herein, the court dismissed from this action the pendent claims and defendants White and Rabon.

In addition to the Title VII claim, the plaintiff's second amended complaint contained the following four state-law claims for relief:

1. Alleged breach of an oral contract by defendant Pioneer relating to Pioneer's claimed promise to reinstate plaintiff after her maternity leave in return for plaintiff's locating and training her temporary replacement (second cause of action);

2. Alleged tortious interference with the aforementioned oral contract between plaintiff and Pioneer by defendant Rabon (third cause of action):

3. Alleged tortious interference by Pioneer with an oral contract between plaintiff and Rabon based on the claimed promise of Rabon to give up her temporary position when plaintiff decided to return to work (fourth cause of action); and

4. Alleged tort of outrage or intentional infliction of emotional distress by all defendants in connection with the termination of plaintiff's employment (fifth cause of action).

In determining whether state law claims can be appended to a federal claim the court turns to the analysis used by the Supreme Court in United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966). Initially, the court must ascertain whether the federal claim is of sufficient substance to confer federal jurisdiction. Then the court must determine whether the federal and state claims arise out of a "common nucleus of operative fact which the plaintiff would ordinarily be expected to try ... in one judicial proceeding ...." 383 U.S. at 725, 86 S.Ct. at 1138. There is no question herein that plaintiff's Title VII claim is of sufficient substance to confer jurisdiction on this court. Defendants have conceded as much. There is, however, at least some question whether the "common nucleus of operative fact" requirement is satisfied in the instant case.

Factually, plaintiff's federal and state claims are quite divergent. The second, third, and fourth causes of action are founded upon the operative facts of alleged oral contracts that came into existence months before the failure to reemploy, the focal point of the Title VII claim. Likewise, the operative facts relating to an alleged discriminatory refusal to reinstate differ substantially from the facts of extreme and outrageous conduct and severe emotional distress which would form the basis of the fifth cause of action. Other courts have held that similar differences in operative facts between the state and federal claims make compliance with the second prong of the Gibbs test impossible. See, e.g., Sanders v. Duke University, 538 F.Supp. 1143 (M.D.N.C.1982); Klupt v. Blue Island Fire Department, 489 F.Supp. 195 (N.D.L.1980); Elliot v. Employers Reinsurance Corp., 28 F.E.P.Cas. 1058 (D.Kan. 1981); Madery v. International Sound Technicians Local 695, 79 F.R.D. 154 (C.D.Cal. 1978).

The better rule, however, and the view of the Fourth Circuit, appears to require only a loose factual connection between the claims to satisfy the requirement that they arise from a common nucleus of operative fact. Only when the state law claim is totally different from the federal claim is there no power to hear the state claim. See Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure: Jurisdiction § 3567, pp. 445-47; Webb v. Bladen, 480 F.2d 306 (4th Cir.1973); cf. Hales v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., 500 F.2d 836, 848 (4th Cir.1974) (state law claim was "separately maintainable and determinable without any reference to the facts alleged or contentions stated in or with regard to the federal count"). Under such a standard, the court is constrained to hold that plaintiff has met the second Gibbs test. Her state and federal claims arise out of the same nucleus of operative fact, if only in the sense that the claims derive from the failure or refusal to reemploy plaintiff after her maternity leave.²

Gibbs delineated the constitutional limits of federal judicial power under Article III of the Constitution. As the Supreme Court has since made clear in Aldinger v. Howard, 427 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 2413, 49 L.Ed.2d 276 (1976), and more recently in Owen Equipment & Erection Co. v. Kroger, 437 U.S. 365, 98 S.Ct. 2396, 57 L.Ed.2d 274 (1978), the existence of Article III power does not end the inquiry into whether a federal court has power to hear the nonfederal claims along with the federal ones. Beyond the "constitutional minimum,"

There must be an examination of the posture in which the nonfederal claim is asserted and of the specific statute that confers jurisdiction over the federal claim, in order to determine whether "Congress in that statute has ... expressly or by implication negated" the exercise of jurisdiction over the particular nonfederal claim.

Owen Equipment & Erection Co. v. Kroger, 437 U.S. at 373, 98 S.Ct. at 2402, quoting Aldinger v. Howard, 427 U.S. at 18, 96 S.Ct. at 2422. Thus, under Aldinger and Kroger, the federal courts must consider whether the statutory grant of federal jurisdiction in question, either expressly or by implication, excludes the state claim from federal court jurisdiction.

In Aldinger, the Supreme Court reasoned that because (under the then case law) Congress had excluded political subdivisions from the "persons" answerable to claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Congress had "by implication" negated the existence of pendent party jurisdiction over nonfederal claims raised against such entities in actions predicated upon Section 1983 and its jurisdictional counterpart, 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3). 427 U.S. at 16-19, 96 S.Ct. at 2421-23.

The Supreme Court in Kroger engaged in a similar analysis. After examining the legislative and judicial history of the federal diversity statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1), the Court emphasized that the "statute and its predecessors have consistently been held to require complete diversity of citizenship" and concluded that this history "clearly demonstrates a congressional mandate that diversity jurisdiction is not available when any plaintiff is a citizen of the same state as any defendant." 437 U.S. at 373, 374, 98 S.Ct. at 2402, 2403. Because the district court's exercise of ancillary jurisdiction in Kroger had destroyed complete diversity, the Supreme Court ruled that to sustain such jurisdiction "would simply flout the congressional command." Id. at 377, 98 S.Ct. at 2404. The Court indicated that the plaintiff had no reason to complain if ancillary jurisdiction does not encompass all his possible claims when he has chosen the federal forum, with its limitations, rather than the state forum. Id. at 376, 98 S.Ct. at 2404.

At least three district courts have held that the Title VII statute and its judicial history reveal an implied congressional command negating pendent jurisdiction in Title VII based actions. See Bennett v. Southern Marine Management Co., 531 F.Supp. 115 (M.D.Fla.1982); Jong-Yul Lim v. International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit, 510 F.Supp. 722 (E.D.Mich.1981); Kiss v. Tamarac Utilities, Inc., 463 F.Supp. 951 (S.D.Fla. 1978).

The most carefully reasoned of the decisions finding a congressional intent in Title VII against entertaining state claims of the kind presented herein is Jong-Yul Lim v. International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit, supra, where, in addition to his Title VII claim based on sex discrimination, the plaintiff alleged pendent claims under the Michigan fair employment practices law and under Michigan common law of contract. Relying upon Aldinger and Kroger, the Lim court held that several procedural characteristics of Title VII, as well as a specific congressional limitation on the nature of the relief and the amount of recovery available under that federal statute, negated by implication the exercise of jurisdiction over the particular nonfederal claims set forth in the complaint.

The court in Lim began its analysis by noting that the relief which Congress has provided under Title VII is equitable in nature, including only reinstatement and backpay, see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(g); EEOC v. Detroit Edison Co., 515 F.2d 301 (6th Cir.1975), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 431 U.S. 951, 97 S.Ct. 2669, 53 L.Ed.2d 267 (1977), and that the statutory...