Rossi v. Trans World Airlines

• Decision Date: 13 November 1972
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 72-1347-AAH.
• Citation: 350 F. Supp. 1263
• Court: U.S. District Court — Central District of California
• Parties: August Paul ROSSI, Plaintiff, v. TRANS WORLD AIRLINES, Defendant.

350 F. Supp. 1263

August Paul ROSSI, Plaintiff, v. TRANS WORLD AIRLINES, Defendant.

Civ. No. 72-1347-AAH.

United States District Court, C. D. California.

November 13, 1972.

Victor I. Reichman, Norwalk, Cal., for plaintiff August Paul Rossi.

Richard C. White, Gary C. Moss, and Gordon E. Krischer, O'Melveny & Myers, Los Angeles, Cal., for defendant Trans World Airlines.

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR SUMARY JUDGMENT

HAUK, District Judge.

This case comes before the court on a motion by Defendant Trans World Airlines (TWA) for summary judgment pursuant to Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Plaintiff has filed a complaint here in Federal Court against his employer, TWA, following his dismissal from that corporation. He seeks reinstatement to the position from which he was removed and a judgment for all back pay, employee benefits, and service benefits of which he was allegedly deprived.

Defendant filed the motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the matter is not subject to judicial review. Plaintiff, it claims, is barred from bringing this action because his claim was submitted to TWA's Pilot System Board of Adjustment for a final and binding decision, which already has been made in accordance with the TWA collective bargaining agreement and section 204 of the Railway Labor Act Title II, as amended, 45 U.S.C. § 184.

In early 1967 August Paul Rossi, the Plaintiff, was hired as a flight engineer with TWA. Immediately upon his employment and continuing through the duration of his association with TWA, he was covered by the collective bargaining agreement between TWA and the Airline Pilots servicing that corporation. In January, 1969, Mr. Rossi asked to be enrolled in TWA's First Officer Training Program and was selected to participate. TWA technically violated one section of its agreement by not notifying Rossi at least 30 days in advance of his assignment to first officer training.¹ Nevertheless, Rossi did not delay the beginning of his participation, as he could have done; and he joined the program.

However, the plaintiff did not perform satisfactorily. Testimony by people who attempted to instruct him indicates that he made negligible if any progress during his training period. Said one of the captains, ". . . we were making no progress . . . I could not find an area where we could make progress, and retain that progress. There was no area that I could find to build something, a foundation from which to go on into the other areas of this training."² At his rate Rossi would not have completed the program in the requisite time. In fact there was evidence at the hearing that he would have needed 20-25 hours of additional aircraft training in order to meet the standards of any possible proficiency.

So on March 31, 1970, Rossi was dropped from the First Officer Training Program on the grounds of unsatisfactory performance and failure to meet the standards of first officer competency.

The collective bargaining agreement sets out a procedure that a flight engineer in Rossi's position should follow,³ and the Plaintiff did contest—albeit unsuccessfully —his termination in the manner provided in the agreement.⁴

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Next he submitted his grievance to TWA's Pilots' System Board of Adjustment for arbitration under sections 21(A) and 21(C) of the collective bargaining agreement. In his letter of submission, Mr. Rossi stated the issue as follows: "Whether the company was justified in discharging the grievant for the reasons assigned in the letter of termination dated March 31, 1970 and signed by R. B. Mueller, General Manager-Flying." The initial four-member Pilots' System Board of Adjustment dead-locked, and Rossi then asked that his case be submitted to a five-man panel, which would include a neutral arbitrator. TWA agreed and, in accordance with Sections 21(A) and (M) of the Agreement, the well known and highly regarded arbitrator, Mr. Sam Kagel, was selected as the fifth member from a list of names suggested by Plaintiff Rossi.

The arbitration hearing occurred on August 26, 1971, in New York City. Mr. Rossi not only attended but also brought along retained counsel. He testified on his own behalf, and his attorney was able to cross examine extensively TWA's witnesses. Enough information was presented and digested to fill a 162-page transcript; and the parties thoroughly explored from both sides the relevant issues of Plaintiff's first officer competence and whether he had been given a proper opportunity to complete the training program. Moreover, Rossi and his counsel argued these issues in their post-hearing brief.

Despite all the material presented by and on behalf of Rossi, in November 1971 the Board ruled 3-2 in favor of TWA, sustaining plaintiff's determination.⁵ He then brought his case to this court.

I

From the foregoing facts, it is quite clear that TWA's augmented five-man Pilots' System Adjustment Board considered Mr. Rossi's case on the merits. The complaint filed in the United States District Court raises essentially the same issues and claims that were presented in the earlier administrative hearings.⁶

The TWA Pilots' System Board of Adjustment was created pursuant to the Railway Labor Act 45 U.S.C. Secs. 153, 184. The latter section provides that disputes "between an employee or group of employees and a carrier or carriers by air growing out of grievances, or out of the interpretation or application of agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, or working conditions . . . shall be handled in the usual manner up to and including the chief operating officer of the carrier designated to handle such disputes; but, failing to reach an adjustment in this manner, the disputes may be referred by petition of the parties or by either party to an appropriate adjustment board . . ." In other words section 184 parallels for airlines the railroad provisions of 45 U.S.C. § 153, McBride v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 312 F.Supp. 731, 734 (W.D.Mo. 1970), and in fact makes it the duty of each carrier and its employees to establish such a board of adjustment with jurisdiction not exceeding that of comparable railroad adjustment boards. Bower v. Eastern Airlines, Inc., 214 F.2d 623, 624 (3d Cir. 1954). Accordingly, the courts have treated such airline pilot adjustment board decisions the same as they have handled Section 153 railroad adjustment board decisions, a policy flowing from legislative intent as well as from statutory parallelism. International Association of Machinists, AFL-CIO v. Central Airlines, Inc., 372 U.S. 682, 83 S.Ct. 956, 10 L.Ed.2d 67 (1963).⁷

The upshot of this parallel treatment is that Pilot Board decisions, like railroad arbitration findings, may operate to constitute a bar to an action in court. This is especially true when the decision is reached on the merits. In Andrews v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company, 406 U.S. 320, 92 S.Ct. 1562, 1565, 32 L.Ed.2d 95 (1972), the court indicated that ". . . in at least some situations the Act makes the federal administrative remedy exclusive, rather than merely requiring exhaustion of remedies in one forum before resorting to another. A party who has litigated an issue before the Adjustment Board on the merits may not relitigate that issue in an independent judicial proceeding . . . In such a case the proceedings before the adjustment board will be the only remedy available to the aggrieved party."

Such a policy of non-review is grounded in the desire to avoid litigation. See Note: Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards on the Merits, 63 Harv.L.Rev. 681 (1950). In fact one must assume that the main reason the parties resorted to arbitration in the first place was to circumvent the identical protracted altercation Plaintiff now invites by coming into the Federal Courts. Both parties knew the arbitration process would be quick and cheap; moreover, the differences would be resolved by people familiar with the practical intricacies of their particular occupation. We hesitate to cancel the advantages that both sides appreciated before and during their dispute.⁸

At least one earlier case reached a holding similar to the one we adopt today. In Bower v. Eastern Airlines, supra, the plaintiff, after being terminated, sought review through the corporate and administrative channels. First he went to the airlines authorities, then to the Eastern Pilot System Adjustment Board. After losing in both forums, he transferred his case to the United States District Court, where Eastern moved successfully for a summary judgment. Affirming the lower court's decision, the Third Circuit said at 214 F.2d at p. 625, "We think it is the general rule that a court will not review the merits of a common law arbitration award which the parties have agreed to accept as final . . . Closer to the present case, essentially the same position has been taken with reference to Railroad Adjustment Board decisions under Title I of the Railway Labor Act citing cases. This line of cases is based upon the accepted view of such adjustment board decisions, stated by Justice Rutledge, speaking for the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia in Washington Terminal Company v. Boswell, 75 U.S.App. D.C. 1, 124 F.2d 235 (1941), aff'd 319 U.S. 732, 63 S.Ct. 1430, 87 L.Ed. 1694:

"`. . . We do not believe Congress intended that adjustment board awards should be circumvented by . . . judicial . . . determination de novo of the merits of the controversy . . . `Congress intended the Board to be and to act as a public agency, not as a private go-between; its awards to have legal effect, not merely that of private advice.' 124 F.2d at pages 240, 244."

Like the court in Bower, we see no reason for allowing a party who has submitted an employment dispute to an adjustment board for a full hearing on the merits to obtain independent review of the same issues by a Federal court. When Congress established the...