Smithey v. St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company

• Decision Date: 23 October 1956
• Docket Number: No. 15386.,15386.
• Citation: 237 F.2d 637
• Parties: Virginia S. SMITHEY, Appellant, v. ST. LOUIS SOUTHWESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

237 F.2d 637 (1956)

Virginia S. SMITHEY, Appellant, v. ST. LOUIS SOUTHWESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY, Appellee.

No. 15386.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

October 23, 1956.

Gerland P. Patten, Little Rock, Ark., for appellant.

Ned Stewart, Texarkana, Ark., for appellee.

Before STONE, JOHNSEN and VOGEL, Circuit Judges.

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge.

This is a diversity suit to recover damages under state law for wrongful discharge. The trial court dismissed the action, without a trial, and the plaintiff has appealed. We must, as a matter of Arkansas law, affirm the judgment.

The basis for the court's dismissal was that the employment relation involved was concededly one that was terminable at will on the part of the plaintiff; that under Arkansas law it therefore also constituted one that was terminable at the will of the defendant; and that in this situation the Arkansas decisions recognized no right in an employee to recover damages for a discharge.

Plaintiff was employed by the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company as a telegrapher, at its offices in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. She worked approximately a year, when she was fired for allegedly failing to cover a relay assignment, which she had been instructed to protect.

There was in effect at the time, and previously, a labor agreement, made between the railroad and a union (the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, which was the collective bargaining agent for the telegraphers on the system) that obligated the railroad, on request within a certain time, to accord any telegrapher employee who might be disciplined "a fair and impartial hearing" before a named official of the railroad, with the privilege of appeal successively to other designated higher officials, and with a right to reinstatement and back-pay, "if the final decision decrees that charges against the employee were not sustained".

This provision, in conjunction with Sec. 3(i) of the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 153(i), gave rise to a federal administrative right and remedy in favor of an employee for a discharge made in violation of the terms of the labor agreement, because of the status accorded by the Act to such an agreement, for federal purposes, in the transportation field. See Moore v. Illinois Central R. Co., 312 U.S. 630, 61 S.Ct. 754, 85 L. Ed. 1089. But the Act did not make this status the subject of a federal right to recover damages for discharges violative of the agreement. The right of a railroad employee to damages for a discharge, whether related to a labor agreement or otherwise, is a matter that has been left entirely to state contractual concept and remedy. Damages for discharges violative of a collective bargaining agreement under the Act can be recovered only "if the state courts recognize such a claim." Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., v. Koppal, 345 U.S. 653, 661, 73 S.Ct. 906, 910, 97 L.Ed. 1325. In other words, a railroad employee cannot claim damages for any discharge, except as the discharge constitutes an actionable one under the law of the applicable state.

Arkansas law appears to treat a labor agreement, in its provisions as to discharge, as impliedly becoming a part of each individual contract of hire. But no right to recover damages for alleged wrongful discharge is recognized in favor of any employee whose personal contract, in its whole, leaves him free to terminate the employment relation at his will. The Supreme Court of Arkansas has held that any qualifications or limitations attempted to be imposed upon the employer's right to discharge in such a situation are without legal actionability for breach, because of a lack of mutuality in respect to this phase of the employment relationship.

The Court so held in the early case of St. Louis, I. M. & S. Ry. Co. v. Matthews, 1897, 64 Ark. 398, 42 S.W. 902, 39 L.R.A. 467, and it reconsidered and adhered to that view, 46 years later, in Petty v. Missouri & Arkansas Ry Co., 1943, 205 Ark. 990, 167 S.W.2d 895, certiorari denied 320 U.S. 738, 64 S.Ct. 37, 88 L.Ed. 437, rehearing denied 320 U.S. 812, 64 S.Ct. 188, 88 L.Ed. 491. There are no later Arkansas decisions departing from the holding of these cases, both of which, the same as the present situation, involved attempts by railroad employees to recover damages for breach of qualifications or limitations on the railroad's right to discharge, having their source in a collective bargaining agreement and so becoming a part of an employee's...