Hechler v. International Broth. of Elec. Workers, AFL-CIO

• Decision Date: 30 September 1985
• Docket Number: AFL-CIO,No. 84-5799,U-4,84-5799
• Citation: 772 F.2d 788
• Parties: 120 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2633, 54 USLW 2222, 103 Lab.Cas. P 11,654 Sally HECHLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS,, an unincorporated association, Local 759 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, System Council, an unincorporated association, Defendants- Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 788

772 F.2d 788

120 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2633, 54 USLW 2222,

103 Lab.Cas. P 11,654

Sally HECHLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, AFL-CIO, an unincorporated association, Local 759 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO System Council U-4, an unincorporated association, Defendants- Appellees.

No. 84-5799.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Sept. 30, 1985.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Nov. 14, 1985.

Joel D. Eaton, Joel Perwin, Podhurst Orseck Parks Josefberg Eaton Meadows & Olin, P.A., Miami, Fla., for plaintiff-appellant.

Robert A. Sugarman, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Richard M. Resnick, Washington, D.C., Allan M. Elster, Miami, Fla., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before HENDERSON and CLARK, Circuit Judges, and TUTTLE, Senior Circuit Judge.

CLARK, Circuit Judge:

This case raises important questions concerning an individual union member's right to sue a union for its alleged negligent acts and whether such a suit can be maintained in state court without violating the doctrine of federal preemption as concerns the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA). Plaintiff was an electrical apprentice with Florida Power & Light (FPL), and a member in good standing with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and its local affiliate. On January 11, 1982, FPL assigned her to a job which she alleges was beyond the scope of her training. On that day, plaintiff sustained injuries while performing work within the scope of her employment. Plaintiff sued the IBEW and its local affiliate, alleging they were negligent in both training and providing her with a safe work place. The gravamen of plaintiff's complaint is that the unions breached a duty owed to her to assure that she was "provided safety in her work place and a safe work place, and further, the plaintiff would not be required or allowed to take undue risks in the performance of her duties which were not commensurate with her training and experience or to work in an area which was not safe as commensurate with her training and experience." In sum, plaintiff alleged that the union had a duty to ascertain that she had had the essential training, background, education, and experience before being assigned to work in an inherently dangerous work place such as an electrical The district court found that the duty allegedly owed to the plaintiff flowed from the collective bargaining agreement which imposed a duty on the union to monitor the safety and training of its members. The district court held that the union's failure to monitor the employee's work place constituted a breach of its duty of fair representation. The court further held that the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate that the union's allegedly negligent activity was unrelated to the collective bargaining agreement or beyond the scope of the employee/union fiduciary relationship. Consequently, the district court ruled that plaintiff's suit was based on federal labor law and that the suit had been properly removed from state to federal court. Finding that federal law applied, the district court then looked to Sec. 10(b) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 160(b), which sets a six-month statute of limitation for suits alleging an unfair labor practice. The court noted that the Supreme Court in DelCostello v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983) had applied the six-month limitations period of Sec. 10(b) to a hybrid Sec. 301/fair representation suit brought by an employee against his employer and union. Plaintiff here filed her suit in state court over two years after she sustained her injury. The district court found that the rationale of DelCostello applied to plaintiff's case because her suit was based upon the union's breach of its duty of fair representation. Accordingly, the district court dismissed the suit for failure to comply with the federal statute of limitations.

substation, and that the union breached that duty. ¹

We reverse and remand for the district court to remand the case to the state court, finding that plaintiff's complaint on its face states a common law negligence claim that General Principles Involving Federal Preemption Under The

may be cognizable in state court and is not preempted by the federal labor laws.

NLRA And LMRA

In conferring broad powers upon the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to interpret and enforce the NLRA, Congress did not specify the extent to which existing state regulation was preempted. Thus, the breadth of preemption mandated by the NLRA was left to interpretation by the courts.

In Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U.S. 485, 74 S.Ct. 161, 98 L.Ed. 228 (1953), the Court held that a state court was not empowered to enjoin union picketing instituted in an attempt to organize a company's employees, where there was no observable threat to public safety. The question presented to the Court was whether "the State, through its courts, may adjudge the same controversy and extend its own form of relief" when resolution of such controversy falls within the jurisdiction of the NLRB. Garner, 346 U.S. at 489, 74 S.Ct. at 165. The Court found the state's action preempted: "Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of its substantive rules and to avoid these diversities and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies," because a "multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law." Garner, 346 U.S. at 490-91, 74 S.Ct. at 166.

The next year in United Construction Workers v. Laburnum Construction Corp., 347 U.S. 656, 74 S.Ct. 833, 98 L.Ed. 1025 (1954), the Court allowed a state tort action brought by a company against a union on the basis of asserted threats of violence accompanying the union's demand that the company recognize the union as the sole bargaining agent for its employees. Although recognizing that the conduct sued upon also violated Sec. 8 of the Act, creating an administrative remedy before the board, the Court found Garner distinguishable because in that case the state's injunctive procedures conflicted with the administrative remedy available before the board, while in Laburnum Congress had provided no administrative substitute for the remedy available under state law.

Here Congress has neither provided nor suggested any substitute for the traditional state court procedure for collecting damages for injuries caused by tortious conduct. For us to cut off the injured respondent from this right of recovery will deprive it of its property without recourse or compensation. To do so will, in effect, grant petitioners immunity from liability for their tortious conduct. We see no substantial reason for reaching such a result.

....

To the extent that Congress prescribed preventive procedure against unfair labor practices, [Garner ] recognized that the Act excluded conflicting state procedure to the same end. To the extent, however, that Congress has not prescribed procedure for dealing with the consequences of tortious conduct already committed, there is no ground for concluding that existing criminal penalties or liabilities for tortious conduct have been eliminated. The care we took in the Garner case to demonstrate the existing conflict between state and federal administrative remedies in that case was, itself, a recognition that if no conflict had existed, the state procedure would have survived. The primarily private nature of claims for damages under state law also distinguishes them in a measure from the public nature of the regulation of future labor relations under federal law.

Laburnum, 347 U.S. at 663-64, 74 S.Ct. 837-38.

Significantly, in permitting the state court suit, the Court made the following observation on the purposes behind the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA):

The 1947 Act has increased, rather than decreased, the legal responsibilities of labor organizations.... The fact that it prescribed new preventive procedure against unfair labor practices on the part of labor organizations was an additional recognition of congressional disapproval of such practices. Such an express recognition is consistent with an increased insistence upon the liability of such organizations for tortious conduct and inconsistent with their immunization from liability for damages caused by their tortious practices.

Laburnum, 347 U.S. at 666-67, 74 S.Ct. at 839 (footnote omitted).

In San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236, 79 S.Ct. 773, 3 L.Ed.2d 775 (1959), the Court reiterated the preemption doctrine but outlined two general exceptions to preemption. In Garmon the employer had refused the union's request to enforce a closed-shop, leading the union to begin picketing his place of business. The employer brought suit in California Superior Court and was granted an injunction plus $1,000 in damages. The Supreme Court reversed, finding that state court jurisdiction is preempted "[w]hen it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a state purports to regulate are protected by Sec. 7 of the [NLRA], or constitute an unfair labor practice under Sec. 8, due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield." Garmon, 359 U.S. at 244, 79 S.Ct. at 779. However, the Court in Garmon also announced two limited exceptions to the preemption doctrine, "where the activity regulated was a merely peripheral concern of the Labor Management Relations Act .... [o]r where the regulated conduct touched interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and...