White v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc.

• Decision Date: 31 May 1990
• Docket Number: 88-1960,Nos. 88-1725,s. 88-1725
• Citation: 899 F.2d 555
• Parties: 134 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2037, 58 USLW 2651, 114 Lab.Cas. P 12,051 Eugene Joseph WHITE, Plaintiff-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. ANCHOR MOTOR FREIGHT, INC. and Local 580, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Defendants-Appellees, Cross-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 555

899 F.2d 555

134 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2037, 58 USLW 2651,

114 Lab.Cas. P 12,051

Eugene Joseph WHITE, Plaintiff-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. ANCHOR MOTOR FREIGHT, INC. and Local 580, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Defendants-Appellees Cross-Appellants.

Nos. 88-1725, 88-1960.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued Sept. 29, 1989.

Decided April 4, 1990.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied May 31, 1990.

Barbara Harvey (argued), Detroit, Mich., for Eugene Joseph White.

David R. Knowles, Cleveland, Ohio, Timothy Sawyer Knowlton (argued), Honigman, Miller, Schwartz & Cohn, Lansing, Mich., for Anchor Motor Freight, Inc.

Gerry M. Miller (argued), Previant, Goldberg, Velman, Gratz, Miller & Brueggeman, Milwaukee, Wis., for Teamsters, Local 580.

Before KRUPANSKY and WELLFORD, Circuit Judges, and CELEBREZZE, Senior Circuit Judge.

KRUPANSKY, Circuit Judge.

Appellant Eugene White (White) appealed the decision of the District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granting appellees Anchor Motor Freight (Anchor) and Local 580 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (Local 580) a directed verdict in appellant's "hybrid" action initiated pursuant to section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 185(a). ¹

White had been employed as a driver for Anchor for approximately nine years transporting motor vehicles by truck when he was discharged on September 10, 1985 after an accident at Port Newark, New Jersey on August 21, 1985. The circumstances of the accident are not in dispute. Appellant was loading new vehicles onto his tractor trailer for transport at Port Newark when he was instructed to move his rig to another location and wait for clearance to proceed loading. Appellant failed to retract a ramp that he had extended for on-loading his cargo before moving his unit. Hidden from appellant's view as he moved his rig, the extended ramp collided with a new BMW automobile that was on the trailer of another carrier.

Appellant immediately reported the accident to his superiors at Anchor's Lansing, Michigan terminal. Upon his return to Lansing on August 24, 1985, appellant was suspended pending full investigation of the circumstances of the accident. On September 10, following investigation and a preliminary assessment that the accident had resulted in approximately $5,000 of damage to the BMW, appellant was discharged from his position with Anchor.

White filed a grievance challenging his discharge with his Local 580 steward, Don Beecham. The grievance resulted in the convening of a "local hearing" on September 27, at which appellant was represented by Local 580 business agent Jim Cooper (Cooper). At the hearing, Cooper requested that appellant be reinstated to his former position without backpay. Management denied this request, and classified appellant's accident as "major." Under article 40, section 1(a) of the National Master Automobile Transporters Agreement (NMATA)--the collective bargaining agreement in effect between Anchor and Local 580--Anchor was permitted to discharge a driver for causing a single "major chargeable accident."

Appellant appealed the decision of the local hearing board to a regional panel comprised equally of union members and members of management (the Michigan Panel). ² On October 28, 1985, after the conclusion of a hearing, the Michigan Panel upheld White's discharge. Thereafter he charged that Cooper's ineffective and perfunctory representation induced the Michigan Panel to uphold his discharge.

On April 7, 1986, White commenced the instant "hybrid 301" action in district court, alleging that his discharge was in violation of the collective bargaining agreement and that Local 580 had breached its duty of fair representation by failing to diligently represent him before the Michigan Panel. Specifically, he alleged that his discharge was in violation of article 40, section 1(a) of the NMATA, i.e., that his accident was not "major" and, therefore, should not have resulted in his discharge. Further, appellant alleged that Local 580's perfunctory representation undermined his effort to be reinstated. In his complaint, White invoked the jurisdiction of the district court pursuant to both section 301 of the LMRA and 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1337. ³

On June 14, 1988, after appellant had presented his case over the course of seven days, the district court granted Anchor's and Local 580's motion for a directed verdict. The court concluded that appellant had not presented any evidence in support of a finding that the incident at Port Newark was not in fact a "major" accident and that, therefore, his discharge had not constituted a breach of the NMATA. Appellant's breach of collective bargaining agreement charge against Anchor having failed, the district court directed a verdict against appellant on his breach of duty of fair representation claim against Local 580. Appellant timely perfected this appeal of the district court's order.

In dismissing White's cause of action against Anchor for breach of the NMATA, the district court properly concluded that no evidence had been adduced in support of appellant's contention that his accident was not properly classified as "major." The NMATA unequivocally permitted the discharge of a union driver for committing a single major chargeable accident. See Whitten v. Anchor Motor Freight, 521 F.2d 1335, 1339 (6th Cir.1975). The court concluded that Anchor had not breached the NMATA by discharging appellant for his "major" accident at Port Newark. Accordingly, this court affirms the district court's order granting Anchor and Local 580 a directed verdict on this issue.

Unable to prove that his accident was not classifiable as a "major" accident, appellant has asserted that the Michigan Panel has traditionally ordered the reinstatement of drivers who had committed infractions of similar magnitude, and that he, too, would have been reinstated had Local 580 properly presented his case to the Michigan Panel. In this vein, appellant has argued that both Local 580 and Anchor discriminated against him for his support of a dissident union organization known as Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), and, more specifically, for having filed complaints against both Local 580 and Anchor with the NLRB earlier in 1985. ⁴ Appellant alleged further that anti-TDU animus caused Anchor to discharge him in the first instance, and was responsible for Cooper's ineffective representation before the Michigan Panel.

In his pleadings before the district court, appellant did not argue that his discharge was discriminatory in violation of NMATA article 14 of the collective bargaining agreement. The argument was referenced neither in appellant's complaint nor in his subsequent pleadings. Both Anchor and Local 580 object to the appellant's efforts to join the issue of unlawful and discriminatory discharge in violation of NMATA article 14 for the first time on this appeal.

White has urged that, although he concededly had failed to reference article 14 in his complaint, it should nevertheless be liberally construed to incorporate by inference a cause of action for discriminatory discharge. In support of this request, appellant alludes to the well established rule that technical defects in factual pleading should not exert a substantive impact on the course of a lawsuit. Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47-48, 78 S.Ct. 99, 102-03, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957). Indeed, it cannot be doubted that a complaint need not allege with exacting specificity every fact underlying a claim for relief in order to survive a motion for dismissal. "[A]ll the Rules [of Civil Procedure] require is 'a short and plain statement of the claim'...." Conley, 355 U.S. at 47, 78 S.Ct. at 103.

In advancing this argument, however, appellant has ignored the import of his complaint, which was framed exclusively in terms of NMATA article 40. Appellant's case below, as evidenced by the issues joined in the complaint, by subsequent pleadings and by the testimony elicited at trial, was anchored exclusively in an argument that, pursuant to article 40, his accident was not of the magnitude that would have resulted ordinarily in a driver's discharge. As such, White's pleadings in the instant case stated a "short and plain" claim for relief arising exclusively from an alleged misapplication of article 40, which addresses the discharge of drivers who have committed major accidents. Simply stated, assigning the most liberal construction to appellant's complaint, no claim beyond the charge that NMATA article 40 had been violated is reasonably discernible.

This court will not decide issues or claims not litigated before the district court. Boddie v. American Broadcasting Cos., Inc., 881 F.2d 267, 268 n. 1 (6th Cir.1989); Yeiter v. Sec. Health and Human Svcs., 818 F.2d 8, 11 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 854, 108 S.Ct. 160, 98 L.Ed.2d 115 (1987). Appellant's request that his complaint be interpreted so as to infer a discrimination claim under article 14 of the NMATA stretches the Conley v. Gibson rule of liberality to an unwarranted extreme and is offensive to the requirement that on appeal "we review the case presented to the district court rather than a better case fashioned after the district court's order." Adams v. James, 784 F.2d 1077, 1080 (11th Cir.1986). Appellant cannot attempt at the appellate level to materially alter his cause of action by advancing for the first time a charge that his discharge was in violation of the anti-discrimination clause of article 14 of the NMATA.

Appellant has also charged that the trial court erred in directing a verdict against appellant on his claim that Local 580 had breached its duty of fair representation. In support of this argument, appellant has cited to precedent of the Sixth and other circuits wherein jurisdiction over a breach of duty of fair representation claim was upheld under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1337 as a cause of action cognizable...