Mason v. Richmond Motor Co., Inc.

• Decision Date: 08 January 1986
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 85-0808-R.
• Citation: 625 F. Supp. 883
• Parties: Willard M. MASON v. RICHMOND MOTOR CO., INC., et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia

625 F. Supp. 883

Willard M. MASON v. RICHMOND MOTOR CO., INC., et al.

Civ. A. No. 85-0808-R.

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Richmond Division.

January 8, 1986.

Everette G. Allen, Jr., John W. Vaughan, Jr., Hirschler, Fleischer, Weinberg, Cox & Allen, Richmond, Va., for plaintiff.

Henry M. Massie, Jr., Robert B. Delano, Jr., Sands, Anderson, Marks & Miller, Richmond, Va., for defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

WARRINER, District Judge.

Presently under consideration by this Court is the question of whether the Court should exercise pendent jurisdiction over the claims asserted by plaintiff under Virginia law in this action brought under the Age Discrimination In Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 621 et seq. (hereinafter "the ADEA").

On 17 October 1985 plaintiff filed his complaint. The first two counts of plaintiff's complaint allege that plaintiff was discharged by his employer, defendant Richmond Motor Co., solely because of his age and thus in violation of the ADEA. Under Counts I and II, plaintiff alleges that the Court's jurisdiction is derived from the ADEA and plaintiff seeks to recover his actual and liquidated damages as provided for by that legislation.

Count III of plaintiff's complaint alleges that plaintiff had an oral contract with Richmond Ford by which he was promised that he would "always" have a position with Richmond Ford and that he would enjoy certain promotions if he continued to work for Richmond Ford. Plaintiff alleges that when defendants fired him they violated this oral contract and that plaintiff suffered injury by detrimentally relying upon the oral contract.

Count IV of the complaint alleges "willful and tortious misconduct on the part of the defendants in violation of a duty owed the plaintiff of continued employment" and essentially sounds as a violation of the "duty of fair dealing." Plaintiff alleges that this Court has jurisdiction over Counts III and IV by means of "ancillary jurisdiction," which I interpret as asserting that the Court has pendent jurisdiction over the claims in Counts III and IV.

I

The law presently in force with regard to pendent jurisdiction was enunciated almost twenty years ago by the Supreme Court in United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966). In that case, the Supreme Court held that in order for pendent jurisdiction to exist:

The state and federal claims must derive from a common nucleus of operative fact. But if, considered without regard to their federal or state character, a plaintiff's claims are such that he would ordinarily be expected to try them all in one judicial proceeding, then, assuming substantiality of the federal issues there is power in federal courts to hear the whole.

Id. at 725, 86 S.Ct. at 1138 (footnote omitted).

The question of whether a court has the power to hear claims arising under pendent jurisdiction is an issue precedent to and distinct from the second question — whether the Court, in its discretion, should exercise that power. The Supreme Court in United Mine Workers v. Gibbs held that:

The power need not be exercised in every case in which it is found to exist. It has consistently been recognized that pendent jurisdiction is a doctrine of discretion, not of plaintiff's right.

Id. at 726, 86 S.Ct. at 1139 (footnote and citation omitted). Thus the analysis a court must follow in determining whether to hear pendent State claims is two-fold: First, the court must determine whether it has the jurisdiction, i.e., the power, to hear the claim; second, the court must determine whether in its discretion it should hear pendent State claims which it in law has the power to hear.

II

With respect to the question of whether this Court has power to exercise pendent jurisdiction over plaintiff's State claims, plaintiff quotes from Gibbs and then states that: "In this case, the operative facts for all counts are drawn from the same nucleus of facts — the wrongful discharge of Willard Mason solely because of age and without cause." (Plaintiff's Brief in Opposition at p. 6). Plaintiff then proceeds to argue that considerations of comity, jury confusion, judicial economy and convenience, and fairness to the litigants all indicate that the Court should, in its discretion, exercise jurisdiction over the pendent State claims found in Counts III and IV of plaintiff's complaint.

Defendant, on the other hand, does not address the question of whether this Court has the power to hear plaintiff's pendent State claims, but immediately proceeds to argue that this Court should decline, as a discretionary matter, to exercise jurisdiction over those claims. Defendant cites three cases in support of its assertion that this Court should decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction over plaintiff's State claims: Chavez v. Guaranty Bank & Trust Co., 607 F.Supp. 484 (D.Col.1985); Ritter v. Colorado Interstate Gas Co., 593 F.Supp. 1279 (D.Col.1984); and Lettich v. Kenway, 590 F.Supp. 1225 (D.Mass.1984). In each of those cases the district court found that it had the power to hear the plaintiff's State claims. In each the judge exercised his discretion to decline.

In Chavez, a Title VII employment discrimination action, the court apparently assumed that a common nucleus of operative fact existed because the federal and State claims both were centered on the single incident of the plaintiff's being fired. Chavez, 607 F.Supp. at 484-85. The Court therefore found that it had power to hear the pendent State claims but in the exercise of its discretion declined to do so. Id. at 485-86.

Similarly, in Lettich v. Kenway, 590 F.Supp. 1225, an ADEA case, Chief Judge Caffrey apparently found that a "common nucleus of operative facts" was present in light of the fact that the event that gave rise both to the federal claim and the State claim was the firing of the plaintiff. See 590 F.Supp. at 1226. As did the district judge in Chavez, Chief Judge Caffrey nevertheless declined to exercise pendent jurisdiction over the State claims asserted by the plaintiff. Id. at 1226-28.

In the third case cited by defendant, Ritter v. Colorado Interstate Gas Co., 593 F.Supp. 1279, the district court was faced with an action brought under the ADEA in which the plaintiff sought to have the Court exercise jurisdiction over related pendent State claims. The Court in Ritter did not assume that it had jurisdiction simply because the ADEA claim and the pendent State claims all arose from plaintiff's firing. Nevertheless, the Court did find that it had the power to hear the pendent State claims. The Court noted that: "a loose factual connection between the federal and State claims has generally been held sufficient to satisfy" the requirement that the federal and State claims arise out of a "common nucleus of operative fact." Id. at 1281. The judge proceeded to present the jurisdictional questions that arise in a case such as that presently before the Court:

All three claims here joined arise from defendant's termination of the plaintiff's employment. Evidence of the parties' conduct at the time of the termination, the plaintiff's job performance, and the company's motivation for discharging him would have to be introduced to prove each of the claims. But the contract claims would require evidence not needed to prove the ADEA claim — such as proof of the existence and terms of the alleged ... oral agreement. The "common nucleus of operative facts" test, however, does not require that the facts giving rise to the state and federal claims be identical. In my view, the pendent contract claims meet the second Gibbs test. Accordingly, this Court is empowered by Article III of the United States Constitution to exercise jurisdiction over the pendent state claims.

Id. Again, the district judge in Ritter declined to exercise the power which he discerned. Id. at 1281-85.

Judge Hamilton of the District of South Carolina has interpreted the Gibbs test in a manner very similar to that set forth by Judge Carrigan in Ritter. In Frye v. Pioneer Logging Machinery, Inc., 555 F.Supp. 730 (D.S.C.1983), a Title VII action, Judge Hamilton stated that:

The better rule ... 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) ...

Frye, 555 F.Supp. at 732.

I have read each one of the above mentioned cases carefully. I think the respective judges have misread Gibbs. In so doing they have expanded federal jurisdiction beyond the Gibbs limit. Only Congress is empowered to expand the jurisdiction of the district courts. U.S. Const. art. III, § 1. Accordingly, I must decline to follow the judges' lead. In particular, I must take exception to the concept that only a "loose factual connection" between the federal and State claims is required to empower the federal court to exercise pendent jurisdiction. A fortiori, I wholly disagree with Judge Hamilton that jurisdiction exists in such cases unless the facts in the State and federal claims are "totally different." I think that a plain reading of the language in United Mine Workers v. Gibbs illustrates why such an interpretation is fallacious. I also think that this progression from "common nucleus" to "totally different" is a paradigm of judicial lawmaking.

The Supreme Court in Gibbs held that for pendent jurisdiction over a State claim to be exercised by a federal court, the asserted federal claim must be "sufficient to confer subject matter jurisdiction on the Court." 383 U.S. at 725, 86 S.Ct. at 1138. The Court then went on to hold that: "The state and...