Warren v. International Broth. of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America

• Decision Date: 08 November 1976
• Docket Number: No. 75-1694,75-1694
• Parties: 93 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2734, 46 A.L.R.Fed. 810, 79 Lab.Cas. P 11,717 W. J. WARREN et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, CHAUFFEURS, WAREHOUSEMEN AND HELPERS OF AMERICA et al., and Arkansas Best Freight Systems, Inc., Defendants- Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 334

544 F.2d 334

93 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2734, 46 A.L.R.Fed. 810,

79 Lab.Cas. P 11,717

W. J. WARREN et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, CHAUFFEURS WAREHOUSEMEN AND HELPERS OF AMERICA et al., and Arkansas Best Freight Systems, Inc. Defendants- Appellees.

No. 75-1694.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted April 15, 1976.

Decided Nov. 8, 1976.

James F. Waltz, Cape Girardeau, Mo., for plaintiffs-appellants; Jack L. Oliver, Cape Girardeau, Mo., on brief.

David Leo Uelmen, Milwaukee, Wis., for defendant-appellee, Unions; Clyde E. Craig, St. Louis, Mo., on brief.

Paul Scott Kelly, Jr., Kansas City, Mo., for defendant-appellee, Arkansas Best Freight System; Loyd E. Owen, Jr. and Thomas J. Jones, Jr., Kansas City, Mo., on brief.

Before LAY and WEBSTER, Circuit Judges, and URBOM, District Judge. ^*

URBOM, District Judge.

This is an action brought by four persons under 28 U.S.C. § 1337 and 29 U.S.C. § 185, also known as § 301 of the Labor-Management Relations Act. The plaintiffs are over-the-road truck drivers. They are former employees of Delta Motor Lines, Inc. (hereinafter Delta), with whom they began service as follows: W. J. Warren, February 24, 1953; J. E. Strickland, April 8, 1956; G. W. Herrington, July 6, 1953; and Charles J. Sitzes, July 6, 1955. Each worked at various locations where Delta had terminals. On October 11, 1962, the Interstate Commerce Commission granted to the defendant Arkansas Best Freight Systems, Inc. (hereinafter ABF) temporary authority to operate Delta. Full merger was approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission on June 16, 1965, and this was effected on July 6, 1965. All the plaintiffs became and still are ABF employees, now working out of the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, terminal. The thrust of the plaintiffs' claim is that their position on the work preference seniority list at Cape Girardeau does not properly reflect their prior years of service with Delta. They seek damages and restoration of their full company seniority. Suit was brought against ABF for breach of the collective bargaining agreement and against the defendant unions (the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America and seven local chapters) for a breach of the duty of fair representation. After a nonjury trial, the district court ¹ denied all relief to the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs now appeal on essentially four grounds:

(1) The district court erred in its failure to find a breach of contract by the defendant ABF;

(2) The district court failed to make adequate findings of fact or conclusions of law with respect to the breach of contract claims of the plaintiff Warren and the damage claims of all the plaintiffs;

(3) The district court erred in its failure to find a breach of the duty of fair representation by the defendant unions; and

(4) The district court abused its discretion when it allowed the defendant unions' answers to requests for admissions to be accepted and filed after the trial had begun.

For the reasons which follow the judgment of the district court will be affirmed.

I. STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

The defendants at trial contended that this entire suit is barred by the statute of limitations, and they pursue this contention now.

This court held in Butler v. Local Union 823, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, etc., 514 F.2d 442, 446 (8th Cir. 1975):

Because there is no federal statute of limitations governing § 301 breach of contract actions or governing fair representation actions, the timeliness of such suits is governed by the "appropriate" state statute of limitations.

There, the court applied Missouri's five-year written contract statute of limitations to the union member's dual claims against the employer for breach of contract and against the union for breach of the duty of fair representation. The court held that the cause of action did not accrue until the grievance was rejected, because only then had the necessary condition precedent to the suit rejection of the grievance due to unfair representation taken place.

The instant action also arose in Missouri, and the five-year written contract statute of limitations is applicable. The grievance upon which this lawsuit is based was filed jointly by the plaintiffs on August 20, 1971. The lawsuit was filed on October 18, 1973; Sitzes was added as a plaintiff on April 10, 1974.

The contention of the union appellees centers around the plaintiff Warren's having previously filed a grievance protesting his seniority standing. That was denied on April 3, 1968. The unions contend (1) that the plaintiff Warren was barred as of April 3, 1973, from bringing a § 301 suit in federal court related to the claims denied in his 1968 grievance and that he should not be able to extend this date by refiling the same grievance, and (2) that the denial of plaintiff Warren's grievance on April 3, 1968, commenced the running of the statute of limitations as to all the other plaintiffs as well.

As stated in Butler, supra, the cause of action does not accrue until the necessary condition precedent to the suit rejection of the grievance due to unfair representation takes place. Here, that rejection due to unfair representation did not take place until 1971. While the contract claims may have been similar to those raised in 1968, the acts forming the alleged breach of the duty of fair representation necessarily differ; those acts did not occur until 1971. The problem is thus that alluded to in Butler, 514 F.2d at 450, n. 12:

The one remaining residue of McMahon v. United States, * * * is that there apparently is no provision in the collective bargaining agreement requiring the employee to submit a grievance within any time limit. Thus, there is a possibility that an employee will be able to extend the time limits of the statute by delaying his filing of a grievance. This power of the employee does not present a serious problem, however, for the union and the employer may agree by contract to a reasonable fixed time limit within which grievances must be filed.

Thus, so long as the union member may timely file a grievance, he may properly claim that the union has breached its duty of fair representation in handling that grievance. And, so long as the issue of that breach of duty of fair representation is before the court, Butler holds that the breach of contract claim on which that grievance is based is timely raised.

There is no indication here that the 1971 grievance was considered as not timely filed. Furthermore, the applicable collective bargaining agreements do not state any time limit for filing grievances. Since the plaintiffs' claims emanate from the denial of the 1971 grievance, they are not barred by the statute of limitations.

II. STATUS OF BREACH OF CONTRACT CLAIMS

There can no longer be any doubt that where the parties to a collective bargaining agreement provide therein for binding arbitration of disputes between the employee and employer, the employee cannot sidestep that grievance machinery. Unless he has attempted to utilize the contractual procedures for settling his dispute with his employer, his independent suit against the employer will be dismissed. Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U.S. 554, 96 S.Ct. 1048, 47 L.Ed.2d 231 (1976); Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650, 85 S.Ct. 614, 13 L.Ed.2d 580 (1965); Steelworkers v. Enterprise Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960). Only when the union has breached its duty of fair representation to the union member may that member bypass the collective bargaining agreement procedure and proceed against the employer for the breach of contract claim. Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 87 S.Ct. 903, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967).

The Supreme Court of the United States in Hines, supra, faced the issue of what measure of finality would be given to the grievance procedure when a dissatisfied union member alleges a breach of the duty of fair representation by the union. The court said:

* * * In our view, enforcement of the finality provision where the arbitrator has erred is conditioned upon the union's having satisfied its statutory duty fairly to represent the employee in connection with the arbitration proceedings. * * * 424 U.S. at 571, 96 S.Ct. at 1060.

Earlier the court said:

* * * The union's breach of duty relieves the employee of an express or implied requirement that disputes be settled through contractual grievance procedures; if it seriously undermines the integrity of the arbitral process the union's breach also removes the bar of the finality provisions of the contract. 424 U.S. at 567, 96 S.Ct. at 1058.

Absent such a showing, the finality provisions of the collective bargaining contract must be honored and the employees must be foreclosed from relitigating that dispute. It is with this in mind that we approach the contract claims against ABF.

The plaintiffs urge that they have established the necessary breach of the duty of fair representation by two means:

A. The unions have admitted it by their failure to file timely denials to the plaintiffs' requests for admissions; and

B. The evidence adduced at trial establishes it. A. Failure

of defendant unions to file timely denial to the plaintiffs'

requests for admissions as to the unions' breach of the duty

of fair representation.

The plaintiffs' requests for admissions were filed on April 1, 1974, together with an amended complaint which added Charles Sitzes as one of the plaintiffs. On that same day identical requests were made on the defendant ABF. ABF obtained an extension of time in which to respond to the requests for admissions and did so within the proper time limit in a document filed May 10, 1974. Trial began May 15, 1974. The union represented at trial that its answers to requests for admissions had been mailed out of Washington on May 13, 1974; they were received and filed on May 16, 1974. ² Counsel stated...