Lydon v. Boston Sand & Gravel Co.

• Decision Date: 02 February 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-1978,98-1978
• Citation: 175 F.3d 6
• Parties: 160 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2981, 137 Lab.Cas. P 10,406 Joseph LYDON, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. BOSTON SAND & GRAVEL COMPANY, Defendant, Appellee. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 6

175 F.3d 6

160 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2981, 137 Lab.Cas. P 10,406

Joseph LYDON, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. BOSTON SAND & GRAVEL COMPANY, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 98-1978.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard Feb. 2, 1999.

Decided April 9, 1999.

James T. Masteralexis, for appellant.

Robert P. Corcoran, with whom Gleeson & Corcoran was on brief, for appellee.

Before SELYA and STAHL, Circuit Judges, and SHADUR, ^* Senior District Judge.

SHADUR, Senior District Judge.

This labor dispute presents a collision at the intersection of judicial doctrines that in this instance would operate at cross-purposes: on the one hand the doctrine of complete federal preemption, and on the other hand both the limitations on that doctrine and the independent principle of judicial estoppel. Appellant Joseph Lydon ("Lydon") has sought to resolve his quarrel with his employer, appellee Boston Sand and Gravel Co. ("Boston Sand"), in two successive forums: first by an attempted arbitration between Lydon's union and Boston Sand pursuant to their collective bargaining agreement ("CBA"), and then by Lydon's lawsuit in a Massachusetts state court pursuant to that state's workers' compensation laws.

When Lydon initially filed his grievance under the CBA, leading in turn to the union's invocation of the arbitration remedy, Boston Sand successfully argued before the arbitrator that the parties had already agreed his claims should instead be decided under state statutes. When Lydon then did file suit in a state court, Boston Sand removed the case to federal court, urging that Lydon's state law claims were preempted by federal labor laws.

Finding that the state law claims were indeed preempted, the district court entered a summary judgment of dismissal in favor of Boston Sand. For the reasons stated in this opinion, we hold that while Lydon's claims might ordinarily be preempted, they are not preempted here because of Boston Sand's prior litigating position. We therefore remand this case to the district court with a direction that it be remanded to the state court of origin.

Facts

Boston Sand hired Lydon as a cement truck driver in 1984. In July 1991 Lydon suffered a work-related neck injury that prevented him from working. He received weekly workers' compensation payments until May 1993, when he settled his claim and received a lump sum payment that was projected to cover four years of weekly payments based on Lydon's expected period of disability.

During those four years Lydon was presumed as a matter of Massachusetts law (Mass.Gen.L. ch. 152, § 148) to be unable to work. Nonetheless Lydon did some driving for another concrete company, Sherman Concrete, from fall 1993 to spring 1995.

In April 1995 Lydon attempted to return to work for Boston Sand. After a physician determined that he was physically able to do so, Lydon met with Vice President David McNeil ("McNeil") and attempted to substantiate his physical ability to return to work by noting his interim job with Sherman Concrete. McNeil informed Lydon that because he had worked for another company for a year and a half, Boston Sand considered Lydon to have quit his job and forfeited his seniority rights. Lydon's union, Teamsters Local 379, then presented a written request for Lydon's reinstatement, which Boston Sand denied.

That request led to an exchange of letters between the union's attorneys and Boston Sand's attorneys. In December 1995 union attorney Paul Kelly ("Kelly") wrote to Boston Sand attorney Robert Corcoran ("Corcoran") that a worker who received a lump sum settlement and was absent from work because of the state statutory presumption of incapacity, but who then wished to return to work, had no remedy under the CBA and that such a claim can arise only under statutory law. Corcoran responded the following month by agreeing with Kelly's assessment but taking it a step further, stating:

It is Boston Sand's position that an injured worker claiming a right of reinstatement following a lump sum settlement can assert such a claim only in court under the statute, and not as a grievance under the contract.

Kelly confirmed a few weeks later by writing back that the union was in agreement that "the reinstatement rights of workers who enter into lump sum agreements are not covered by the collective bargaining agreement and, as such, must be asserted in judicial proceedings."

After the May 1997 expiration of the four-year statutory presumption of Lydon's incapacity to work, his private attorney threatened to sue Boston Sand under the state workers' compensation statute. That threat led to negotiations that resulted in Lydon's returning to work on August 11, 1997, but with seniority preference only over those hired in or after July 1997. That minimal preference left Lydon significantly farther down on the seniority list--with an accompanying loss of benefits--than he would have been if he had been reinstated with the seniority rights of his original 1984 date of hire.

On August 17, 1997 the union filed a grievance against Boston Sand, claiming that its refusal to grant Lydon seniority based on his 1984 date of hire violated the CBA. That grievance proceeded to arbitration, where the arbitrator held that the dispute was not arbitrable because the parties had previously agreed (in the already-described 1995-96 exchange of letters) that reinstatement rights, which the arbitrator determined included both rehiring and seniority, were not covered by the CBA and could be enforced only under state statutes. In the face of the explicit references to "reinstatement rights" in the letters, the arbitrator rejected Lydon's argument that the 1995-96 agreement covered only rehiring and not seniority. Further, the arbitrator agreed substantively with the parties' exchange of letters in finding that the CBA did not at all address the rights of workers who received lump sump settlements, so that it could not be considered inconsistent with the state statute.

Lydon then filed a civil suit in Massachusetts state court, claiming that Boston Sand violated Mass. Gen. L. ch. 152, §§ 75A and 75B ¹ because it discriminated against him by failing to reinstate his original seniority rights when he started back to work. As stated earlier, Boston Sand removed the suit to federal court on the predicate that the state law claims were preempted by Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185 ("Section 301").

Lydon's appeal disputes the district court's entry of summary judgment in favor of Boston Sand on that ground. As always, our review of the district court's award of summary judgment is de novo (Wightman v. Springfield Terminal Ry., 100 F.3d 228, 230 (1st Cir.1996)).

Preemption Doctrine

Certain aspects of federal labor law have long been construed to preempt the field--they not only provide for federal jurisdiction over contract disputes but also prohibit certain state law actions in the same subject area. In the labor law context, the statutory foundation for such complete preemption is found in Section 301(a):

Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this chapter ... may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.

From those simple words, a complex preemption jurisprudence has grown in stages. Initially state courts were simply prevented from applying local rather than federal law in deciding contract disputes about CBAs (see Local 174, Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U.S. 95, 82 S.Ct. 571, 7 L.Ed.2d 593 (1962)), but then the doctrine was extended to preempt state law remedies whenever resolution of a plaintiff's claim is substantially dependent on analysis of a CBA's terms (Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985)). Such preemption is necessary, according to the Supreme Court, to retain consistency in the interpretation of terms common to CBAs and to prevent parties from relabeling as state law claims their actions that in actuality arise under a CBA (see, e.g., Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U.S. 107, 122-23, 114 S.Ct. 2068, 129 L.Ed.2d 93 (1994)).

Nonetheless the doctrine does not preclude all state law claims that are somehow linked to a labor dispute. Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 405-06, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988) (emphasis added) states the test for determining whether a particular state remedy has been preempted by federal law:

[I]f the resolution of a state-law claim depends upon the meaning of a collective-bargaining agreement, the application of state law (which might lead to inconsistent results since there could be as many state-law principles as there are States) is pre-empted and federal labor-law principles--necessarily uniform throughout the Nation--must be employed to resolve the dispute.

Mere parallelism between a state law claim and a federal contract claim does not necessarily require state court interpretation of the CBA--that is, as long as the state claim can be resolved without construing the agreement itself, it is not preempted by Section 301 (id. at 409-10, 108 S.Ct. 1877). Furthermore, "the bare fact that a collective-bargaining agreement will be consulted in the course of state-law litigation plainly does not require the claim to be extinguished" (Livadas, 512 U.S. at 124, 114 S.Ct. 2068, citing and thereafter quoting from Lingle, 486 U.S. at 413 n. 12, 108 S.Ct. 1877).

Courts confronted with state law claims must therefore locate the line between the need for mere consultation of a CBA, which does not demand federal preemption, and more active interpretation of that agreement, which does preempt the state law claims. As we have said of that dichotomy, "[o]ur premise is that this means a real...