International Union of Elec., Radio and Mach. Workers, AFL-CIO-CLC v. Ingram Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 26 September 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-1544,AFL-CIO-CLC,82-1544
• Citation: 715 F.2d 886
• Parties: 114 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3083, 98 Lab.Cas. P 10,458 INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ELECTRICAL, RADIO AND MACHINE WORKERS,, and its Local 1013, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. INGRAM MFG. CO., Defendant-Appellant. Summary Calendar.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 886

715 F.2d 886

114 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3083, 98 Lab.Cas. P 10,458

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF ELECTRICAL, RADIO AND MACHINE WORKERS, AFL-CIO-CLC, and its Local 1013 Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. INGRAM MFG. CO., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 82-1544

Summary Calendar.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 26, 1983.

Manitzas, Harris & Padgett, J. Joe Harris, San Antonio, Tex., for defendant-appellant.

Frank Herrera, Jr., San Antonio, Tex., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Before RUBIN, JOHNSON and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge:

This case involves a suit under Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185, to enforce a labor arbitration award made under a collective bargaining agreement and an alleged strike settlement agreement. The International Union of Electrical Workers (the Union) is plaintiff-appellee and Ingram Mfg. Co. is defendant-appellant. The district court denied the Union's contention that the statute of limitations had run on Ingram's right to contest enforcement of the award, but on the merits granted summary judgment for the Union enforcing the award. Ingram appeals, and we affirm.

The labor arbitration award in question was handed down on June 16, 1980. On September 19, 1980, the Union filed suit under Section 301, LMRA, 29 U.S.C. § 185, to enforce the award. On October 6, 1980, the defendant-employer filed its answer contending that the award was not enforceable on grounds that the arbitrator had exceeded his authority, resulting in an award which did not draw its essence from the collective bargaining agreement. The Union replied by moving to strike Ingram's affirmative defenses on the ground limitations had run. Both parties moved for summary judgment.

LIMITATIONS

We turn our attention first to the issue of the applicable period of limitations. This is a straightforward case under Section 301 of a union seeking to enforce an arbitration award and the company refusing to abide by the award. The Union asserted in the district court that the limitations period provided for in either the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 12, or the Texas General Arbitration Act, Tex.Stat.Ann. art. 237(B), was applicable. Each of those statutes provides a ninety day limitation upon a suit to set aside an arbitration award. Ingram contended that either the six months limitation period of Section 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 160(b), or the general four year Texas Statute of Limitations, Tex.Stat.Ann. 5529, was applicable.

The district court found that limitations had not run on Ingram's affirmative defenses. The Union has appealed this decision. On May 12, 1983, we notified the parties that we were withholding final decision in this case because of two cases in which the United States Supreme Court had granted certiorari. Both of those cases involved suits which related in substantial measure to the limitations issues in the enforcement of arbitration awards. The decisions in those cases have now been rendered sub nom. DelCostello v. Intl. Bhd. of Teamsters, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983). We find that the decisions of the Supreme Court are not controlling as to this case. DelCostello and its companion case involved suits brought by individual employees against the employer and the union challenging the outcome of grievance procedures and arbitration. The suits against the employer were for breach of contract under Section 301, LMRA. The fair representation suits against the union arose in the implied right to bring such suits under the National Labor Relations Act. Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 177, 188, 87 S.Ct. 903, 910, 915-16, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967).

In DelCostello, the Court held that in such cases, the typically short limitations period contained in arbitration acts in the various states should not apply. Instead, the six months limitation period for unfair labor practices under the National Labor Relations Act, Section 10(b), was the most analogous and useful limitations period. Holding that the six months period should be applied in suits brought by employees, the Court pointed out the importance of having a uniform statute of limitations applicable to both employer and union. Such cases involve claims against the employer in the nature of a breach of contract suit and against the union for lack of fair representation, which, if treated separately, would call for a different limitations period. Further, such suits might or might not involve arbitrations, making limitations in arbitration statutes only sometimes applicable.

For our purposes, the significant aspect of the Supreme Court's opinion in DelCostello is to be found in the recognition that it was distinguishing cases brought by employees attacking both the employer and the union for failing to deal with them fairly from the typical cases of a union or employer suing to vacate a labor arbitration award. In the latter kind of case, the Court accepted the general principle that the state limitations contained in state arbitration statutes should be the analogous limitations period made applicable in such lawsuits. DelCostello, supra, 103 S.Ct. at 2287, 2289. The Supreme Court decision, therefore, reinforces such holdings as Chauffeurs, Teamsters Warehousemen, and Helpers, Local Union 135 v. Jefferson Trucking Co., 628 F.2d 1023 (7th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1125, 101 S.Ct. 942, 67 L.Ed.2d 111 (1981). Jefferson Trucking involved the factual pattern of the principal case. The union sued to enforce an award after the company had refused to obey the award and had not brought suit to set it aside. The Court applied the Uniform Arbitration Act, as adopted in Indiana. It found that the company, having failed to sue to vacate the award within ninety days as provided in that statute, could not later attack the award as invalid in the union's suit to enforce the award.

The reasoning of Jefferson Trucking does not control our case, however. Since DelCostello does not control the limitations periods applicable to suits to vacate an arbitration award by the union or employer party to that award, we do look to the Texas General Arbitration Statute. The critical difficulty immediately arises because the Texas General Arbitration Statute has an uncommon provision that in terms makes the statute inapplicable to any collective bargaining agreement between an employer and a labor union. Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 224(a).

It has been regularly assumed that the limitations period in the Federal Arbitration Act does not apply to labor cases for the same reason. The statute in terms provides that it is not applicable to contracts involving employees in interstate commerce. Thus, this same obstacle to using the state ninety day limitations period of the Texas General Arbitration Act is created by the provision of the Texas law withdrawing the statute from applicability to labor disputes.

We have controlling law in this Circuit on this point. Edwards v. Sea-Land Service, Inc., 678 F.2d 1276 (5th Cir.1982), involved the same factual situation as that in the DelCostello case. Employees brought actions against the employer and the union to set aside an arbitration award in favor of their former employer. The suit against the employer rested on a claim of breach of the agreement and against the union on a claim of a breach of its duty of fair representation. After careful consideration we found that the six months limitation of Section 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act did not apply. DelCostello changes this conclusion because Sea-Land Service did involve an employee suit against employer and union. The limitations period in such suits is now six months as derived from Section 10(b) of NLRA.

Since in Sea-Land we rejected the six months NLRA limitations period, we went on to consider what statutory period would be applicable in a suit to set aside an arbitration award. Prior authority looked to arbitration statutes for the appropriate limitations period. We found that the three months limitation period of the Federal Arbitration Act did not apply because the Act specifically excludes contracts of employment involving any employees engaged in foreign or interstate commerce, 9 U.S.C. § 1.

We then turned our attention to the Texas statutes. The Texas General Arbitration Act is in large part an adoption of the Uniform Arbitration Act. However, as we pointed out earlier, the Texas Act added an amendment which provides that nothing in the Act applies to "[a]ny collective bargaining agreement between an employer and a labor union;" Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 224(a). We, therefore, concluded in Sea-Land that the Texas General Arbitration Statute's ninety day limitations period for setting aside an arbitration award was not a "comparable limitations statute" because of the stated policy of the state making the Act and its limitations period inapplicable to labor disputes and collective bargaining agreements. We rejected the applicability of the ninety day limitations period of the Texas General Arbitration Act, Sea-Land, supra, 678 F.2d at 1289.

Sea-Land concluded that the Texas catch-all statute of limitations, Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 5529, which provides for a four year limitations period applied. We follow this holding as the controlling precedent. Under the applicable limitations period, therefore, Ingram's affirmative defenses to the Union's suit to enforce the arbitration award are timely. In summary, we hold in the light of the prior developed caselaw and the Supreme Court's analysis in DelCostello that the six months limitations period under the Labor Management Relations Act and the three months period under the Federal Arbitration Act are not applicable. The most closely comparable state limitations period, therefore, is the one which applies. In the case of...