Fuqua v. Brennan

645 F. App'x 519
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedMay 13, 2016
DocketNo. 15-3226
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 645 F. App'x 519 (Fuqua v. Brennan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fuqua v. Brennan, 645 F. App'x 519 (7th Cir. 2016).

Opinion

ORDER

Leonard Fuqua, a former postal worker, appeals the district court’s (1) grant of summary judgment for the Postal Service on his claim that he was discriminated against based on his age, in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U.S.C. § 633a(a), (c); (2) dismissal of his “hybrid” claims under the Postal Reorganization Act, 39 U.S.C. § 1208(b), that the United States Postal Service breached a collective bargaining agreement and that his union breached its duty of fair representation by failing to challenge the Postal Service’s actions; and (3) denial of his petition for a writ of mandamus ordering the clerk of the district court to issue a default judgment against a non-party. We affirm.

Fuqua brought this suit against the Postmaster General, the Postal Service, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union (the national union), and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, AFL-CIO/ Local 306 (the union’s local affiliate). According to his complaint (which he amended five times), Fuqua, a mail handler at the Postal Service’s O’Hare Air Mail Center, faced a job reassignment in May 2010 after the Postal Service notified its employees that it was closing the facility. [521]*521Employees would be transferred to other facilities through a process in which they bid on reassignments based on their seniority and position availability. Employees had to submit their bids by June 14, 2010, or be involuntarily transferred to an open position within a 1000-mile radius of the O’Hare facility. The Postal Service published on May 14 an initial list of positions available, including some positions in Gary, Indiana. As a senior employee, then age 49, Fuqua planned to bid on the positions in Gary that were closest to his home. But before he could submit his bid, the list was updated and no longer included those positions. Fuqua did not bid, and the Postal Service reassigned him to a facility in Kansas City, Missouri, and directed him to appear for work there on August 14.

Between May and August 2010, Fuqua on five occasions asked his local union to file grievances based on what he believed to be violations of the collective bargaining agreement. In his view, the Postal Service’s bidding process and job transfer violated the CBA protections for senior employees. He asserted that he was a senior full-time employee who was being transferred more than 100 miles from his home, whereas junior, part-time flexible employees were being reassigned not more than 100 miles from their homes. The union never filed a grievance.

In August 2010 Fuqua did not report to his job assignment in Kansas City, and several months later, on March 26, 20Í1, he was fired for failure to appear.

In his fifth amended complaint (which named only the Postal Service and the union’s local affiliate as defendants), Fuqua alleged hybrid claims that the Postal Service breached the collective bargaining agreement and that the local union breached its duty to represent him fairly. See 39 U.S.C. § 1208(b). Fuqua also alleged that the Postal Service discriminated against him based on age when it gave more favorable transfers to junior employees and transferred him, a senior employee, to a posting far from his Chicago home and then discharged him.

The district court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss the complaint in part, and denied it in part. The court dismissed Fuqua’s hybrid claims as time-barred because he did not file suit until August 2012 and his claims had accrued more than a year earlier (between April 2010 and March 2011 for claims against the Postal Service, and between May and August 2010 for claims against the local union) — well-past the 6-month limitations period (borrowed from 29 U.S.C. § 185(a)). The court rejected Fuqua’s proposal that it should create an extended three-year limitations period to apply to “blatant willful egregious” violations of a collective bargaining agreement. The court, however, did allow Fuqua to proceed on his ADEA claim that the Postal Service discriminated against him based on age when it transferred and then discharged him.

During the period that Fuqua was amending his complaints, an unusual procedural glitch occurred. After he filed his third amended complaint (which did not name the national union as a defendant), Fuqua sought a default judgment against the national union because it had not filed an appearance in court or responded to his complaint. Fuqua filed a proposed order of default judgment, which, for reasons not in the record, was signed by a clerk in the district court and docketed. Several days later the district court denied the request' for default judgment as “inappropriate” because the national union had in fact ap-péared before the court, and then withdrawn its appearance, after Fuqua had removed it as a party on his most recent amended complaint. Fuqua then peti[522]*522tioned the court for a writ of mandamus to compel the clerk to issue a certified copy of the default judgment order she had signed. But the court also denied this petition, stating that the order had been signed “clearly in error” and that it had set the order aside for good cause.

After the close of discovery, the Postal Service moved for summary judgment on the age discrimination claim. Fuqua introduced evidence that junior, part-time flexible mail handlers received transfers to jobs in the Chicago area, which he deemed a preferable location.

The district court granted summary judgment for the Postal Service. Regarding Fuqua’s claim of discriminatory termination, the court determined that Fuqua did not establish a prima facie case under the indirect method of proof because he did not produce evidence that he was meeting-the Postal Service’s legitimate job expectations (as he admitted that he never showed up for his job in Kansas City). As for his claim of discriminatory transfer, the court determined that Fuqua failed to make out a prima facie case because he did not present evidence that the Postal Service treated similarly situated younger employees more favorably than he. None of his evidence established the ages of the employees. And even if Fuqua could establish a prima facie case, added the court, he failed to raise a fact question whether the Postal Service’s stated reason for downsizing its workforce — a reduction in force for budgetary concerns — was pretext.

On appeal Fuqua first challenges the district court’s conclusion that his hybrid claims are time-barred, and he maintains that the court should have created an equitable “remedy” in the form of a 3-year limitations term. He contends that the Postal Service’s “willful, blatant, and egregious” breach of the collective bargaining agreement should not be protected by the 6-month limitations period.

The district court correctly applied the appropriate 6-month statute of limitations. Fuqua’s claim arises under the Postal Reorganization Act, 39 U.S.'C. § 1208(b), which is the analogue of § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a). See Truhlar v. U.S. Postal Serv., 600 F.3d 888, 891 n.

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Bluebook (online)
645 F. App'x 519, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fuqua-v-brennan-ca7-2016.