Hechler v. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

772 F.2d 788, 120 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2633
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedSeptember 30, 1985
DocketNo. 84-5799
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 772 F.2d 788 (Hechler v. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hechler v. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 772 F.2d 788, 120 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2633 (11th Cir. 1985).

Opinion

CLARK, Circuit Judge:

This case raises important questions concerning an individual union member’s right to sue a union for its alleged negligent acts and whether such a suit can be maintained in state court without violating the doctrine of federal preemption as concerns the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA). Plaintiff was an electrical apprentice with Florida Power & Light (FPL), and a member in good standing with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and its local affiliate. On January 11, 1982, FPL assigned her to a job which she alleges was beyond the scope of her training. On that day, plaintiff sustained injuries while performing work within the scope of her employment. Plaintiff sued the IBEW and its local affiliate, alleging they were negligent in both training and providing her with a safe work place. The gravamen of plaintiff’s complaint is that the unions breached a duty owed to her to assure that she was “provided safety in her work place and a safe work place, and further, the plaintiff would not be required or allowed to take undue risks in the performance of her duties which were not commensurate with her training and experience or to work in an area which was not safe as commensurate with her training and experience.” In sum, plaintiff alleged that the union had a duty to ascertain that she had had the essential training, background, education, and experience before being assigned to work in an inherently dangerous work place such as an electrical [790]*790substation, and that the union breached that duty.1

The district court found that the duty allegedly owed to the plaintiff flowed from the collective bargaining agreement which imposed a duty on the union to monitor the safety and training of its members. The district court held that the union’s failure to monitor the employee’s work place constituted a breach of its duty of fair representation. The court further held that the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate that the union’s allegedly negligent activity was unrelated to the collective bargaining agreement or beyond the scope of the employee/union fiduciary relationship. Consequently, the district court ruled that plaintiff's suit was based on federal labor law and that the suit had been properly removed from state to federal court. Finding that federal law applied, the district court then looked to § 10(b) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 160(b), which sets a six-month statute of limitation for suits alleging an unfair labor practice. The court noted that the Supreme Court in DelCostello v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983) had applied the six-month limitations period of § 10(b) to a hybrid § 301/fair representation suit brought by an employee against his employer and union. Plaintiff here filed her suit in state court over two years after she sustained her injury. The district court found that the rationale of DelCostel-lo applied to plaintiff’s case because her suit was based upon the union’s breach of its duty of fair representation. Accordingly, the district court dismissed the suit for failure to comply with the federal statute of limitations.

We reverse and remand for the district court to remand the ease to the state court, finding that plaintiff’s complaint on its face states a common law negligence claim that [791]*791may be cognizable in state court and is not preempted by the federal labor laws.

General Principles Involving Federal Preemption Under The NLRA And LMRA

In conferring broad powers upon the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to interpret and enforce the NLRA, Congress did not specify the extent to which existing state regulation was preempted. Thus, the breadth of preemption mandated by the NLRA was left to interpretation by the courts.

In Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U.S. 485, 74 S.Ct. 161, 98 L.Ed. 228 (1953), the Court held that a state court was not empowered to enjoin union picketing instituted in an attempt to organize a company’s employees, where there was no observable threat to public safety. The question presented to the Court was whether “the State, through its courts, may adjudge the same controversy and extend its own form of relief” when resolution of such controversy falls within the jurisdiction of the NLRB. Garner, 346 U.S. at 489, 74 S.Ct. at 165. The Court found the state’s action preempted: “Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of its substantive rules and to avoid these diversities and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies,” because a “multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are- different rules of substantive law.” Gamer, 346 U.S. at 490-91, 74 S.Ct. at 166.

The next year in United Construction Workers v. Laburnum Constmction Corp., 347 U.S. 656, 74 S.Ct. 833, 98 L.Ed. 1025 (1954), the Court allowed a state tort action brought by a company against a union on the basis of asserted threats of violence accompanying the union’s demand that the company recognize the union as the sole bargaining agent for its employees. Although recognizing that the conduct sued upon also violated § 8 of the Act, creating an administrative remedy before the board, the Court found Garner distinguishable because in that case the state’s injunctive procedures conflicted with the administrative remedy available before the board, while in Laburnum Congress had provided no administrative substitute for the remedy available under state law.

Here Congress has neither provided nor suggested any substitute for the traditional state court procedure for collecting damages for injuries caused by tortious conduct. For us to cut off the injured respondent from this right of recovery will deprive it of its property without recourse or compensation. To do so will, in effect, grant petitioners immunity from liability for their tortious conduct. We see no substantial reason for reaching such a result.
To the extent that Congress prescribed preventive procedure against unfair labor practices, [Garner ] recognized that the Act excluded conflicting state procedure to the same end. To the extent, however, that Congress has not prescribed procedure for dealing with the consequences of tortious conduct already committed, there is no ground for concluding that existing criminal penalties or liabilities for tortious conduct have been eliminated. The care we took in the Garner case to demonstrate the existing conflict between state and federal administrative remedies in that case was, itself, a recognition that if no conflict had existed, the state procedure would have survived. The primarily private nature of claims for damages under state law also distinguishes them in a measure from the public nature of the regulation of future labor relations under federal law.

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Bluebook (online)
772 F.2d 788, 120 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2633, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hechler-v-international-brotherhood-of-electrical-workers-ca11-1985.