Koch Foods, Inc. v. Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health

712 F.3d 476, 2013 CCH OSHD 33,275, 35 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 25, 2013 WL 869645, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 4913
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedMarch 11, 2013
Docket11-14850
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 712 F.3d 476 (Koch Foods, Inc. v. Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health) 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
Koch Foods, Inc. v. Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, 712 F.3d 476, 2013 CCH OSHD 33,275, 35 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 25, 2013 WL 869645, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 4913 (11th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

FRIEDMAN, District Judge:

Petitioner Koch Foods, Inc. appeals the final decision and order issued by the Administrative Review Board (ARB) of the Department of Labor (DOL), in which the ARB determined that Koch Foods had violated the whistleblower protection provision of the Surface Transportation Assis *478 tance Act (STAA) by firing its employee, respondent Timothy Bailey.

Congress passed the STAA’s whistle-blower provision in 1983 to “protect[ ] employees in the commercial motor transportation industry from being discharged in retaliation for refusing to operate a motor vehicle that does not comply with applicable state and federal safety regulations or for filing complaints alleging such noncompliance.” Brock v. Roadway Express, 481 U.S. 252, 255, 107 S.Ct. 1740, 95 L.Ed.2d 239 (1987). The current version of the statute protects from retaliation employees who engage in certain protected activities, one of which is refusing to operate a motor vehicle “because ... the operation violates a regulation, standard, or order of the United States related to commercial motor vehicle safety, health, or security.” 49 U.S.C. § 31105(a)(1)(B)(i) (Supp. V 2012). This appeal presents a question of statutory interpretation: Is protection under Section 31105(a)(1)(B)(i) triggered only when operation of the motor vehicle would result in an actual violation of law? Or may the ARB interpret the provision to cover circumstances in which a driver reasonably but incorrectly believes that operation would result in a legal violation?

Koch Foods argues that Section 31105(a)(l)(B)(i) unambiguously protects an employee’s refusal to drive only if driving would have resulted in an actual violation of law. Respondent, the Secretary of Labor, contends that the statute is ambiguous, and that the ARB’s interpretation of this clause as incorporating a subjective belief element is reasonable and entitled to Chevron deference. See Chevron U.S.A, Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984)

After reviewing the plain language of the provision and its statutory context, as well as the relevant statutory history, we hold that the phrase “refuses to operate a vehicle because ... the operation violates a regulation, standard, or order,” as used in 49 U.S.C. § 31105(a)(1)(B)©, refers only to circumstances in which operation would result in an actual violation of law. Accordingly, we vacate the ARB’s decision and remand so that the ARB may evaluate whether the operation of Mr. Bailey’s assigned vehicle would have resulted in an actual violation of a regulation, standard or order related to commercial motor vehicle safety, health, or security.

I. BACKGROUND

Timothy Bailey worked as a driver transporting chickens from farms to a Tyson Foods plant for four years until May 2007, when Koch Foods purchased the plant where Mr. Bailey worked and became his new employer. Koch Foods introduced to the company fleet a new type of trailer, which was longer and could carry more chicken cages. Soon after, Bailey noticed that some of the new trailers were arriving at Koch Foods’ processing plant overweight — that is, above the 80,000 pound weight limit mandated by federal and state law.

On his July 25, 2007 drive, Mr. Bailey observed that his tractor-trailer, at approximately 84,000 pounds, was overweight, but he did not inform his supervisor of the problem. The next day, when Bailey arrived at the farm and found the same type of trailer waiting for him, he perceived it as overweight and refused to drive it back to the plant. Another driver pulled the trailer assigned to Bailey, who then waited about half an hour while the crew loaded a different type of trailer, which Bailey pulled back to the plant. Although Bailey could have called his boss from the farm, he did not do so that day.

*479 Early the next morning, Mr. Bailey notified his supervisor, Tim Graul, of the event. Bailey was suspended for three days; upon returning to work after his suspension, he was notified that he was fired for refusing a reasonable assignment and causing a slowdown in production. Bailey was unemployed from August until December 2007, when he took a job as a dispatcher at Tyson Foods.

Mr. Bailey filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), arguing that he was fired for refusing to drive a vehicle he believed was overweight in violation of state and federal law. Bailey claimed that his termination violated the whistleblower protections of the STAA, and OSHA determined that Bailey’s complaint had merit. At an administrative hearing on the merits, the administrative law judge (ALJ) heard testimony from Bailey that he had seen overweight trailers on the scales in the scale house and had made a few runs with overweight trailers. The ALJ admitted into the record weight tickets dated July 16, 2007 and July 25, 2007 for tractor-trailers weighing over the 80,000 pound weight limit.

The ALJ also heard testimony from Bailey’s supervisor, Tim Graul, that the farm staff had been instructed to cease over-packing chickens into trailers, and that the supervisor who had overseen the packing of chickens on July 16, 2007 had been removed from his supervisory position. The safety manager for Koch Foods, Jon Burdick, also testified that the issue of overweight tractor-trailers had been addressed. In addition, Mr. Graul testified that he had seen the weight ticket for the tractor-trailer that Bailey refused to drive and that the trailer, in fact, was not overweight. The weight ticket was not admitted into the record.

The ALJ found that Mr. Bailey’s belief that the vehicle was unlawfully overweight was objectively reasonable. The ALJ made no formal findings as to whether the vehicle Bailey refused to operate actually was overweight, concluding that Bailey’s reasonable belief was sufficient to render Bailey’s refusal a protected activity under the STAA. The ALJ issued a recommended decision and order in favor of Mr. Bailey.

The ARB affirmed the ALJ’s decision. In doing so, the ARB undertook a detailed examination of the statute. It acknowledged that its prior decisions “appealed] to require that the employee’s refusal to haul be based on an ‘actual’ violation of a safety regulation.” Nevertheless, the ARB concluded that the statute was ambiguous as to whether the operation of a vehicle by an employee actually had to violate the law for that refusal to be protected.

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712 F.3d 476, 2013 CCH OSHD 33,275, 35 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 25, 2013 WL 869645, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 4913, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/koch-foods-inc-v-secretary-us-dept-of-labor-for-occupational-safety-ca11-2013.