McIlravy v. Kerr-McGee Coal Corp.
Decision Date | 28 February 2000 |
Docket Number | KERR-MCGEE,No. 98-8091,98-8091 |
Citation | 204 F.3d 1031 |
Parties | (10th Cir. 2000) LEROY MCILRAVY; ALLEN LEE MAHONEY; RICHARD E. MASSMAN; ROBERT H. GRAY, Plaintiffs - Appellees, v.COAL CORPORATION, a Delaware corporation, Defendant - Appellant |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming. D.C. No. 93-CV-302
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Gregory A. Eurich, Holland & Hart, Denver, Colorado (with Marcy G. Glenn and Megan C. Bertron of Holland & Hart and Carolyn Gregg Hill of Andrews Davis Legg Bixler Milsten & Price, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with him on the briefs) for Defendant - Appellant.
Stephen H. Kline, Kline & Jenkins, Cheyenne, Wyoming (with Kenneth E. Barker, Quinn, Eiesland, Day & Barker, Belle Fourche, South Dakota with him on the brief) for Plaintiffs - Appellees.
Before TACHA, KELLY and LUCERO, Circuit Judges.
This diversity case has been through two jury trials and is again before us on appeal. Some two years ago, this court considered the case and reversed the trial court's grant of partial summary judgment as to the plaintiffs' breach of contract claim. At a subsequent trial, judgment was entered for the plaintiffs, and the defendant, Kerr-McGee Coal Corporation ("KMC"), now appeals from the jury verdict awarding damages for breach of employment contract. We must determine whether the law of the case doctrine bars consideration of appellant's claimed error as having been decided implicitly in the previous appeal. Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we conclude that the doctrine of law of the case bars consideration of the merits of KMC's claims and affirm.
In 1992, KMC fired appellees Leroy McIlravy, Allen Lee Mahoney, Richard E. Massman, and Robert H. Gray, all salaried, supervisory employees, as part of a reduction in force ("RIF"). It allegedly did so without considering appellees' seniority at the company and without cause, in violation of the following RIF provision in KMC's 1976 and 1977 employee handbooks:
REDUCTIONS IN FORCE
If a job is eliminated or an operation reduced, the determination of the employee or employees to be demoted or laid off will be made on the basis of qualifications and seniority.
Demotions in a progression line required by reduction of force will generally be made in the reverse of the normal order of promotion. An employee demoted to a lower classification will carry back all earned classification seniority. Employees will, on the basis of qualifications and Classification Seniority, successively demote downward through the classifications of the affected progression line. An employee who is displaced from a progression line by this demotion procedure may only displace an employee with less Company Seniority who occupies either another entry level classification in a progression line or the lowest related non-progressional classification (s), provided the employee has the qualifications to perform the work of such classification.
Layoffs will be made from the entry level classification in progression lines or from non-progressional classifications. An employee subject to being laid off from the higher rated non-progressional classification (s) may only displace an employee with less Company Seniority who occupies either an entry level job in a progression line or the lowest rated non-progressional classification (s), provided the employee has the qualifications to perform the work of such classification.
In 1993, appellees filed suit against KMC in United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, alleging breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and promissory estoppel arising from the RIF. The district court granted summary judgment to KMC on all claims save the claim of promissory estoppel, the parties tried that claim, and a jury found for KMC. On appeal, this court affirmed the jury verdict and the grant of summary judgment on appellees' claim of breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, but reversed the grant of summary judgment on the breach of contract claim, finding there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether KMC breached an employment contract with appellees. See McIlravy v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 119 F.3d 876 (10th Cir. 1997) ("McIlravy I").
Specifically, McIlravy I held, inter alia, that the foregoing RIF provision
indicates that [KMC] would take seniority into account in selecting employees for layoffs . . . [I]t can also reasonably be construed as representing that the company would make layoffs in order of seniority, if the conditions above were met. Plaintiffs contend that the company's selection of them for termination breached these representations. They have cited evidence that the company went strictly by performance rankings when it selected them for termination and that it gave no consideration at all to seniority. Under the circumstances, we agree with appellants that genuine issues of material fact exist as to whether [KMC] performed according to the representations in the handbook. Accordingly, the summary judgment in favor of defendant on the breach of contract claim must be reversed and remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Id. at 881-82 (citation omitted).
On remand, a second jury rendered its verdict against KMC, awarding appellees total damages of $2,371,028 for breach of contract. KMC thereupon filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law, alleging that the RIF provision did not apply to salaried, supervisory employees and, even if it did, the RIF provision was inapplicable and unenforceable under the circumstances of the present case. The district court denied KMC's motion, which led to this appeal.
Before reaching the merits of KMC's claims of error, we must decide whether to bar them under the doctrine of law of the case.1 "[T]he law of the case 'doctrine posits that when a court decides upon a rule of law, that decision should continue to govern the same issues in subsequent stages in the same case.'" United States v. Monsisvais, 946 F.2d 114, 115 (10th Cir. 1991) (quoting Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 618 (1983)). "[W]hen a case is appealed and remanded, the decision of the appellate court establishes the law of the case and ordinarily will be followed by both the trial court on remand and the appellate court in any subsequent appeal." Rohrbaugh v. Celotex Corp., 53 F.3d 1181, 1183 (10th Cir. 1995).
The enunciated rationales for the law of the case doctrine are compelling: The doctrine is "based on sound public policy that litigation should come to an end and is designed to bring about a quick resolution of disputes by preventing continued re-argument of issues already decided," Gage v. General Motors Corp., 796 F.2d 345, 349 (10th Cir. 1986) (citations omitted), so avoiding both a wasteful expenditure of resources by courts and litigating parties and the gradual undermining of public confidence in the judiciary--in short, Dickens's Jarndyce v. Jarndyce syndrome. The promotion of judicial economy--a primary concern underlying the law of the case doctrine--requires that litigants be encouraged to present all available claims and defenses at the earliest opportunity. See id. () (citations omitted). The doctrine "also serves the purposes of discouraging panel shopping at the court of appeals level." Monsisvais, 946 F.2d at 116 (citing Heathcoat v. Potts, 905 F.2d 1161, 1164 (11th Cir. 1990)).
The doctrine is, however, "only a rule of practice in the courts and not a limit on their power." Id. (citing Messinger v. Anderson, 225 U.S. 436, 444 (1912)). We have recognized three "exceptionally narrow" grounds for departure from that rule of practice: "(1) when the evidence in a subsequent trial is substantially different; (2) when controlling authority has subsequently made a contrary decision of the law applicable to such issues; or (3) when the decision was clearly erroneous and would work a manifest injustice." United States v. Alvarez, 142 F.3d 1243, 1247 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 242 (1998) (citing Monsisvais, 946 F.2d at 117).
As noted, this court has considered once before appellees' ability to enforce the RIF provision of the handbooks in an appeal at the summary judgment stage of this litigation. See McIlravy I, 119 F.3d at 878-82. With regard to KMC's claim that the terms of the provision were "too vague and indefinite to permit enforcement," (Appellant's Br. at 39), in McIlravy I the panel summarized the appellants' claim as follows: Id. at 879. In response to that argument, the panel specifically held the RIF provision Id. at 881-82. McIlravy I therefore expressly indicated that the "seniority" language of the RIF provision was not unenforceably vague as a matter of law. Barring one of the "exceptionally narrow" grounds for departure from the law of the case doctrine, discussed below, we will not revisit that decision.
KMC's claim that the RIF provision does not apply to salaried, supervisory employees like appellees is less straight-forward. In this court's earlier decision, that issue was implicitly rather than...
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