McBride v. Delta Air Lines, Inc.

• Decision Date: 11 March 1977
• Docket Number: No. 75-1955,75-1955
• Citation: 551 F.2d 113
• Parties: 14 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1137, 13 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 11,566, 14 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 7757 James McBRIDE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. DELTA AIR LINES, INC., Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 113

551 F.2d 113

14 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1137,

13 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 11,566,

14 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 7757

James McBRIDE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. DELTA AIR LINES, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

No. 75-1955.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 6, 1976.

Decided March 11, 1977.

A. G. Burkhart, Jr., Memphis, Tenn., for plaintiff-appellant.

William F. Kirsh, Jr., Heiskell, Donelson, Adams, Williams & Wall, Memphis, Tenn., Sidney F. Davis, Law Dept., Delta Airlines, Inc., Atlanta, Ga., for defendant-appellee.

Before WEICK, EDWARDS and McCREE, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

James McBride appeals from the dismissal of his individual and class claims against Delta Air Lines. In his complaint he alleged that Delta had discriminated against him in particular and against black employees and black applicants for employment in general because of their race, in violation of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 2000e-2.

Delta had a national policy requiring dismissal for "conduct unbecoming a Delta employee," and regarded conviction of a crime as within that standard. In 1970, appellant was convicted of assault and battery on a Memphis policeman. Delta thereupon discharged McBride because of this rule and because of his spotty work record.

The district court found that "there was no discriminatory intent" motivating Delta's discharge of McBride. It also determined, after comparing the race of all employees discharged because of the national policy about convictions with the race of all dischargees, that the national policy was not discriminatory in effect. Of course, an employment practice which is discriminatory in effect on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin violates 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1) and (2). Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 91 S.Ct. 849, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971). But these determinations are supported by the evidence and are not erroneous. We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismisses McBride's individual claim.

We do not believe, however, that the district court correctly applied our circuit standard expressed in Tipler v. DuPont, 443 F.2d 125 (6th Cir. 1971), defining the scope of a class in a Title VII complaint. The district court's order does not make clear whether the class aspects of McBride's complaint were dismissed because no class could properly be certified, because the scope of the class would be more narrow than that which McBride had sought, because Delta had not violated 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2, or because on the evidence presented no relief, injunctive or otherwise, was warranted for a violation of the statute.

In Tipler, we stated that the complaint filed by an aggrieved employee limits in some respects the scope of the class which may be certified in judicial proceedings. However, we held that the district judge should not restrict the scope of the class more narrowly than the ambit of the EEOC investigation that the individual's complaint might reasonably have been expected to stimulate. Because administrative complaints are filed by completing a form designed to elicit specificity in charges, and because the forms are not legal pleadings and are rarely filed with the advice of legal counsel, any other standard would unreasonably limit subsequent judicial proceedings which Congress has determined are necessary for effective enforcement of the legal standards established by Title VII. See House Report No. 92-238, U.S.Code Cong. and Admin.News, pp. 2141, 2147-48 (1972).

McBride's complaint to the EEOC alleged that he had been discharged because of his race. The EEOC's conciliation effort might reasonably have been expected to be restricted to Delta's discharge policies, and perhaps even particularly to the conviction rule which, according to McBride, was racially discriminatory in effect. However, in order to determine whether the discharge policy was racially motivated or was racially discriminatory in effect, the investigative effort would certainly have required review of any racially discriminatory practices within Delta's large and complex personnel structure. Indeed, a pervasive pattern of discriminatory effects may support an inference of intentional discrimination underlying the individual charge of discriminatory firing. See Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., --- U.S. ----, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977). Therefore, the case must be remanded for a determination of the appropriate scope of the class in light of the Tipler standard.¹

Furthermore, whatever may be the proper scope of the class, the district court's dismissal of the class claims on the merits is unwarranted. In its written opinion the court implicitly finds that there was a pervasive pattern of discriminatory employment practices at Delta when McBride's administrative and judicial complaints were filed. Nevertheless, it does not determine whether or not Delta has violated Title VII. Instead, the opinion states that a grant of injunctive or other relief would be "unwise." This determination may have been based in part on Delta's evidence of good faith efforts to remedy the earlier discrimination, and in part on the difficulty of coordinating relief with the administration of a system-wide discrimination suit brought by the United States against Delta in the Northern District of Georgia. See United States v. Delta Air Lines, No. C-18175 (N.D.Ga., April 27, 1973).

We agree with the district court that an appropriate disposition should afford the Memphis employees the opportunity to have their claims of discriminatory employment practices at their terminal fully considered, should recognize the interest of Delta in avoiding inconsistent remedies or unnecessarily onerous liability, and should not interfere with the orderly implementation of the Atlanta system-wide decree. The procedures for multidistrict litigation, see 28 U.S.C. § 1407, may be useful in reconciling these objectives.

The case is therefore remanded for reformulation of the scope of the class, for findings of fact and conclusions of law on the charge that Delta has violated the rights of the class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2, and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and for appropriate class remedies if a violation is found. The foregoing is without prejudice to the utilization of the procedures for multidistrict litigation, if the district court should in its discretion determine that those procedures would be useful.

WEICK, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

I would affirm the judgment of the District Court in its entirety. I regard McBride's claim for discriminatory discharge as frivolous, and the remand ordered by the majority opinion as wholly unnecessary.

McBride was employed by Delta as a Skycap in 1968. His employment came about as a result of the friendship and influence of his father with Delta's Memphis Terminal Manager. The following year McBride, who is black, was given a double promotion to the position of Cargo Service Agent, which was a responsible position, and in receiving the promotion McBride skipped the intermediate position of Cargo Service Supply Agent.

After receiving the promotion, however, his work product deteriorated. He had three accidents on company premises due to his negligence in operating a company vehicle, which negligence resulted in property damage. The District Judge, in his opinion, indicated that it was shown in several areas that McBride was accident prone. He further stated:

A great deal of emphasis was given to the fact that in one of these accidents there was an alleged defective condition of brakes, which the Court feels was really immaterial to any question here. The condition of the brake of the object hit seems scarcely to the Court to be material to whether the person hitting it with another object was careless or not, and the proof and evidence, the Court feels, demonstrated that the carelessness occurred in the case of this employee and that we don't find that with respect to the time that Mr. McBride was employed by Delta that it has been established that there was discrimination practiced against him with respect to any discipline that may have been imposed by reason of these different episodes.

It has also been shown that Mr. McBride, in connection with one of the accidents did fail to report the accident which involved a customer of the air line, and that this was a factor which fairly could be taken into account and was testified about by one of the supervisory officers in appraising Mr. McBride's trustworthiness in that respect.

In addition to his being accident prone, which is not a virtue for an airline employee whose employer is required by law to maintain at all times a high standard of safety for its passengers and crew, McBride was subject to discipline for being tardy and absent from work. Notwithstanding this poor employment record, Delta took no action to discharge him until after he had been convicted upon his plea of guilty and had served a sentence of a serious violent crime of assault and battery committed upon two police officers of Memphis, Tennessee.

On May 3, 1969, while off duty, and following an automobile accident in which he and his brother were involved, an altercation took place between McBride, his brother and the two police officers who were at the scene and were investigating the accident. One of the officers was white and the other was black. McBride and his brother, both of whom were intoxicated, attacked the two officers, injuring one of them. It was necessary to call out additional police cars to the scene in order to rescue the officers. No racial connotations were involved in this incident since the attack was upon both white and black arresting officers.

McBride was arrested and charged with assault and battery on the officers. Even this incident did not result immediately in his discharge. The company cautiously waited until after his trial...