Stevens v. Gateway Transp. Co.

• Citation: 696 F.2d 500
• Decision Date: 20 January 1983
• Docket Number: Nos. 82-1222,82-1426,s. 82-1222
• Parties: 112 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2177, 96 Lab.Cas. P 13,936 Robert L. STEVENS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GATEWAY TRANSPORTATION COMPANY, and Local 710, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Defendants-Appellees. Aielt EVANS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MAISLIN TRANSPORT, LTD. (formerly Gateway Transportation Company, Inc.) and Local Union 710 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Defendants- Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 500

696 F.2d 500

112 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2177, 96 Lab.Cas. P 13,936

Robert L. STEVENS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GATEWAY TRANSPORTATION COMPANY, and Local 710, International

Brotherhood of Teamsters, Defendants-Appellees.

Aielt EVANS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MAISLIN TRANSPORT, LTD. (formerly Gateway Transportation

Company, Inc.) and Local Union 710 of the

International Brotherhood of Teamsters,

Defendants- Appellees.

Nos. 82-1222, 82-1426.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 29, 1982.

Decided Dec. 22, 1982.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 20, 1983.

Kenneth A. Green, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Edwin H. Benn, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before CUMMINGS, Chief Judge, COFFEY, Circuit Judge, and HILL, ^* Senior District Judge.

CUMMINGS, Chief Judge.

These appeals involve the same issue and were consolidated for oral argument and disposition.

The material facts in each are similar. On April 21, 1979, plaintiff Evans was discharged from employment with Gateway Transportation Company ("Gateway") for being intoxicated on the job. He filed a grievance with his union, Local 710 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters ("the Union"), on May 1, 1979. As provided for in the collective bargaining contract between Gateway and the Union, Evans's grievance was submitted to arbitration and on May 31, after a hearing before a joint employer-union committee ("Joint Committee"), his discharge was upheld. On April 20, 1981, some twenty-two months after the Joint Committee's decision, Evans filed suit against Gateway and the Union, charging (1) that the Union did not fairly represent him at his arbitration hearing, and (2) that Gateway's discharge of him was unlawful. Evans sought $40,000 in damages from the Union and reinstatement and back pay from Gateway. On February 16, 1982, District Judge Robson dismissed both claims as time-barred under Illinois' 90-day statute of limitations governing suits to vacate arbitration awards, Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 10, Sec. 112(b) (1981). In a footnote Judge Robson added that if the 90-day limitation period were not applicable, the 6-month period of limitations in Section 10 of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 160, would control and also bar Evans's suit.

Plaintiff Stevens was discharged from employment with Gateway for failure to submit to a blood alcohol test. Stevens filed a grievance with the Union and after a hearing before the Joint Committee his discharge was also upheld. Some twenty-three months after the Joint Committee's ruling, Stevens brought an action against Gateway and the Union identical in all relevant respects with that of Evans. On January 13, 1982, District Judge Marshall handed down a minute order granting defendants' motions for summary judgment on the ground that Stevens's action was time-barred under either the 90-day Illinois statute of limitations or the 6-month federal statute of limitations governing unfair labor practice claims.

On appeal both plaintiffs argue that the district courts below should have applied Illinois' 5-year statute of limitations governing miscellaneous civil actions, including actions "on awards of arbitration." Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 83, Sec. 16 (1981). For the reasons that follow we affirm both judgments.

Plaintiffs do not argue that the district courts erred in looking to Illinois law to determine whether their claims were time-barred. In fact, they argue that the district courts were required to do so. They concede that the district courts properly characterized their claims against both the Union and Gateway as actions to vacate arbitration awards for purposes of deciding what Illinois statute of limitations to adopt as the federal standard. ¹ But they argue only that the Illinois statute of limitations governing actions to vacate arbitration awards like those of the Joint Committee is not that adopted below.

The district courts adopted Section 12(b) of Illinois' Uniform Arbitration Act. That Section provides as follows:

An application [to vacate an arbitration award] under this Section shall be made within 90 days after delivery of a copy of the award to the applicant, except that if predicated upon corruption, fraud or other undue means, it shall be made within 90 days after such grounds are known or should have been known.

Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 10, Sec. 112(b) (1981). Section 12(e) of the same Act, however, provides that Section 12(b) shall not apply "to the vacating * * * of any award entered as a result of an arbitration agreement which is a part of or pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement." Plaintiffs argue that the Joint Committee's decisions are such awards, that their claims against both the Union and Gateway are, in effect, attempts to vacate those awards, and that the district courts were therefore forbidden by Section 12(e) from applying the 90-day limitations period of Section 12(b). Plaintiffs maintain that because of Section 12(e), the Illinois 90-day statute does not apply, and the district courts should have applied Illinois' 5-year statute governing actions "on awards of arbitration."

Implicit in plaintiffs' argument are three propositions: (1) Illinois courts would not in fact apply the 90-day limit in Section 12(b) to actions to vacate decisions by the Joint Committee; (2) federal courts may not do with Section 12(b) what Illinois courts would not do; (3) when measuring the timeliness of plaintiffs' suits, federal courts must do as Illinois courts would do. Though we have doubts about the first proposition, ² we will assume its truth for purposes of this appeal. We have no doubts, however, about the second and third propositions. Neither is true.

Plaintiffs' claims arise under federal, not state, law. ³ Their timeliness is thus a federal, not state, question. United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 60, 101 S.Ct. 1559, 1562, 67 L.Ed.2d 732 quotingInternational Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 704-705, 86 S.Ct. 1107, 1112-1113, 16 L.Ed.2d 192. Had Congress enacted a statute of limitations that expressly governed plaintiffs' claims we would be bound to apply it, not some statute enacted by the Illinois legislature. Plaintiffs' second proposition is therefore false unless timeliness of suit is magically transformed from a federal to a state question whenever a federal court borrows a state statute of limitations.

No such transformation occurs. That Congress has not enacted a statute of limitations expressly governing plaintiffs' claims does not mean that national interests are any less implicated by the choice of an appropriate limitations period than if Congress had enacted such a statute. It simply means that the task of choosing a limitations period consistent with national interests devolves upon the federal courts. Hoosier Cardinal, supra, 383 U.S. at 701, 86 S.Ct. at 1110-1111. Federal courts look to state law in fashioning appropriate limitations periods for suits like plaintiffs' not because principles of federalism require it, but because the "range of judicial inventiveness" in such matters is not, and should not be, unlimited. Id. at 701, 86 S.Ct. at 1111, quoting Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 457, 77 S.Ct. 912, 918, 1 L.Ed.2d 972. That range extends only so far as national interests require, and if state law is consonant with those interests and lack of uniformity in federal law would not threaten them, there is no need for a federal court to do more than adopt state law.

Plaintiffs would limit us further. They would prohibit us from applying a borrowed state statute of limitations differently than the state would apply it even at the expense of national interests. They would have us apply Illinois' 5-year statute because its 90-day statute supposedly does not by its terms expressly apply even though federal labor policy strongly favors the "relatively rapid disposition of labor disputes." Mitchell, 451 U.S. at 63, 101 S.Ct. at 1564, quoting Hoosier Cardinal, 383 U.S. at 707, 86 S.Ct. at 1114. We are not, however, bound by the letter of state limitation statutes to disserve the spirit of national labor policy. See Occidental Life Insurance Co. v. EEOC, 432 U.S. 355, 367, 97 S.Ct. 2447, 2454, 53 L.Ed.2d 402; Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, 421 U.S. 454, 465, 95 S.Ct. 1716, 1722, 44 L.Ed.2d 295. The Supreme Court recently held as much in United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, supra. Mitchell involved a suit by a discharged employee against his local union and employer. The employee challenged the lawfulness of the discharge in a grievance proceeding before a joint committee of employer and union representatives and the committee upheld his discharge. Seventeen months later the employee filed suit under Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 185(a), alleging that the union had unfairly represented him during the arbitration proceeding and that his discharge was unlawful. Defendants argued that the suit was time-barred by New York's 90-day statute of limitations for "application[s] to vacate or modify an [arbitration] award," N.Y.Civ.Prac.Law Sec. 7511 (McKinney 1963). There was considerable doubt, however, whether New York courts would apply New York's 90-day statute of limitations to a suit by an employee to vacate an arbitration award. The Second Circuit declined to adopt the statute partly because it thought New York courts would not even entertain such a suit let alone measure its timeliness under a particular limitations rule. Mitchell v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 624 F.2d 394, 398 (2nd Cir.1980). The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the relevant consideration was not whether New York would in fact apply its statute to claims like Mitchell's but whether the kinds of claims to which it would apply its statute were "closely analogous" to Mitchell's. 451 U.S. at 61 n. 3, 101 S.Ct. at 1563 n. 3...