Gonzalez v. Aloha Airlines, Inc.
| Decision Date | 09 August 1991 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 90-15518,90-15585,s. 90-15518 |
| Parties | 138 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2202, 119 Lab.Cas. P 10,871 William H. GONZALEZ, Plaintiff-Appellant-Cross-Appellee, v. ALOHA AIRLINES, INC., a Hawaii Corporation, Defendant-Appellee, and Hawaiian Airlines, Inc., a Hawaii Corporation, Defendant-Appellee-Cross-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
S.V. Quitiquit, Case & Lynch, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, for plaintiff-appellant-cross-appellee.
Richard M. Rand, Torkildson, Katz, Jossem, Fonseca & Moore, Honolulu, Hawaii, for defendants-appellees-cross-appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii.
Before SCHROEDER, FLETCHER and FERGUSON, Circuit Judges.
We must decide the appropriate statute of limitations under the Employee Protection Program ("EPP") of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, 49 U.S.C.App. Sec. 1552(d). Appellant William H. Gonzalez brought suit against Aloha Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines because of their failure to grant him a preferential hiring status to which he was allegedly entitled under the EPP. He filed the suit on February 13, 1986.
The EPP guarantees a "first right of hire" to certain airline employees who were terminated between October 24, 1978 and October 24, 1988. This right takes effect when such an employee informs another airline with whom he or she is seeking employment that the EPP applies. Gonzalez was employed as a pilot by Braniff Airlines until May 12, 1982, when the airline terminated him in conjunction with its bankruptcy. He thus falls within the purview of the EPP. He applied several times for employment with the defendant airlines following that termination, and claims that those airlines violated the EPP in failing to hire him. The airlines contend that the claims are time barred. The statute itself contains no statute of limitations.
The district court granted partial summary judgment against Gonzalez, finding most of his claims time barred, after it applied the six-month statute of limitations contained in section 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA"), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 160(b). Gonzalez v. Aloha Airlines, 669 F.Supp. 1023 (D.Haw.1987). This statute of limitations barred all of Gonzalez' claims except for his claims that Aloha Airlines had violated the EPP by failing to hire him for its pilot class of February 26, 1986, and that Hawaiian Airlines had similarly violated the statute by failing to hire him for its December 3, 1985 class. The district court then found Aloha liable for violating the EPP, but dismissed the claim against Hawaiian on the ground that Hawaiian had not been adequately informed of Gonzalez' EPP status when it filled its December 3, 1985 class. The district court ordered Aloha to pay Gonzalez back pay for the period from February 26, 1986 to March 17, 1986, when Aloha ultimately hired Gonzalez as a pilot. It further ordered the airline to grant Gonzalez the seniority that he would have had if he had started on the earlier date, and to compensate him with back pay for the difference between that seniority level and the seniority he actually attained.
Gonzalez appeals the district court's choice of the six-month statute of limitations. He seeks to pursue additional claims against the airlines for Aloha's alleged failure to hire him for three 1984 pilot classes, the earliest of which began on April 16 of that year. He also seeks to pursue claims against Hawaiian for that airline's alleged failure to hire him for eleven pilot classes starting between March 12, 1984 and June 18, 1985. Because we find that the district court erred in applying the six-month statute of limitations period, we reverse that aspect of the court's ruling and apply the two-year statute of limitations contained in Haw.Rev.Stat. Sec. 657-11. In all other respects, we affirm.
Because the EPP does not provide its own statute of limitations, a court interpreting it must borrow a limitations period from another source. See DelCostello v. International Bhd. of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 158, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 2287, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983). Ordinarily, such a limitations period will be borrowed from analogous state law provisions. Id. Where a state rule is aberrant or "at odds with the purpose or operation of federal substantive law," however, a federal court will look elsewhere. DelCostello, 462 U.S. at 161, 103 S.Ct. at 2289; Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Assocs., 483 U.S. 143, 147, 107 S.Ct. 2759, 2762, 97 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987). A court should "decline to borrow a state statute of limitations only 'when a rule from elsewhere in federal law clearly provides a closer analogy than available state statutes, and when the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation In DelCostello, upon which the district court in this case rested its holding, the Supreme Court borrowed a federal statute of limitations. It held that a hybrid action brought by an employee alleging breach of a collective bargaining agreement by his employer and breach of the duty of fair representation by his union was subject to the six-month statute of limitations contained in section 10(b) of the NLRA. 462 U.S. at 169-71, 103 S.Ct. at 2293-94. The basis for the Court's choice of the NLRA's six-month period was that the action implicated " 'those consensual processes that federal labor law is chiefly designed to promote--the formation of the collective agreement and the private settlement of disputes under it.' " DelCostello, 462 U.S. at 163, 103 S.Ct. at 2290 (quoting Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 702, 86 S.Ct. 1107, 1111, 16 L.Ed.2d 192 (1966)). Thus, in DelCostello, the six-month limitations period contained in section 10(b) was the most appropriate rule because it properly balanced the national interest in promoting stable bargaining relationships and the individual's interest in challenging arguably unfair actions of unions and employers.
make that rule a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking.' " Reed v. United Transp. Union, 488 U.S. 319, 324, 109 S.Ct. 621, 625, 102 L.Ed.2d 665 (1989) (quoting DelCostello, 462 U.S. at 172, 103 S.Ct. at 2294)
A successfully prosecuted EPP claim may affect seniority relationships between employees, as well as the relationship between the successful EPP litigant and the employer. For that reason, the district court applied DelCostello in this case. The claim at stake in DelCostello, however, directly involved the relationships between a union and its members and between a union and an employer, as established by collective bargaining agreements controlled by federal law. See Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 87 S.Ct. 903, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967). As a result, it directly implicated the federal policies behind labor laws designed to promote collective bargaining. The six-month statute of limitations contained in section 10(b) of the NLRA was intended to minimize the disruption of such bargaining arrangements by individual claimants. Its application to the hybrid claim at issue in DelCostello substantially furthered the policies at stake.
In contrast, the EPP furthers a federal policy designed to assist individual employees who lost their jobs as a result of airline deregulation. See Alaska Airlines v. Brock, 480 U.S. 678, 691-93, 107 S.Ct. 1476, 1483-84, 94 L.Ed.2d 661 (1987). It applies without regard to whether the former or prospective employer was signatory to a collective bargaining agreement. This policy therefore does not directly involve the relationships between unions and their members or between unions and employers. When no union is involved, the employer-employee relationship would be governed by state law. Application of a state statute of limitations therefore would not, as in DelCostello, undermine federal policies. The district court's decision not to apply a state statute of limitations was therefore erroneous. Our holding on this issue is in accord with that of the Second Circuit in McDonald v. Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 930 F.2d 220 (2d Cir.1991), which rejects an argument that the NLRA's six-month limitations period should apply to an EPP claim, and applies a three-year period provided by Massachusetts law.
Because we decide that the district court must apply a state statute of limitations to the EPP claim, we must now determine which Hawaii limitations period should apply to Gonzalez' claims. There are three possibilities. When Gonzalez filed his complaint on February 13, 1986, Haw.Rev.Stat. Sec. 657-11 provided a one-year statute of limitations for any suit brought in state court seeking recovery authorized by federal statute. Thus, at that time, if...
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