William T. McCormick v. At & T Technologies, Inc. Cameron Allen

934 F.2d 531

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• Decided: June 21, 1991
• Docket: 88-3542
• Status: Published

Opinions

CHAPMAN, Circuit Judge:

The issue presented here is whether an employee’s state law claims against his employer for intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, conversion, and negligence in the care of a bailment are preempted by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a). The employee’s claims arose out of his employer’s disposal of the contents of his work locker upon his discharge. The district court ruled that because resolution of the state law claims would require interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement to determine whether the employer was authorized to act as it did, the state law claims were preempted by § 301.

We affirm.

I.

William T. McCormick was employed by AT & T Technologies, Inc. (“AT & T”) in Richmond, Virginia, until his discharge in October, 1986. During his employment with AT & T, McCormick was a member of a collective bargaining unit whose exclusive bargaining agent was the Communications Workers of America (“the union”). The terms and conditions of McCormick’s employment were governed by a collective bargaining agreement between AT & T and the union. The agreement vested McCormick with numerous rights and benefits including the right to grieve and arbitrate employment disputes.

On September 11, 1986, McCormick left his job at AT & T claiming to be ill. He did not return to work, and on September 26, 1986, AT & T notified him by registered letter that his employment would be terminated if he did not report to work by September 30, 1986. McCormick did not report and AT & T terminated • his employment by letter dated October 1, 1986. McCormick’s termination was made effective September 22, 1986.

On October 2, 1986, Cameron Allen, McCormick’s supervisor at AT & T, was notified of McCormick’s termination. Allen opened McCormick’s work locker to remove tools that had been issued him by AT & T. Allen also removed McCormick’s personal belongings and discarded them. Allen later was confronted by the union shop steward regarding McCormick’s locker. The steward told Allen that other employees had rummaged through the trash and found a personal letter addressed to McCormick. According to the steward, the letter had been read by several of McCormick’s co-workers.

On October 3, 1986, McCormick returned to AT & T. During a meeting at which McCormick was represented by a union steward, McCormick offered excuses as to why he had failed to report to work. AT & T decided to void the termination letter, and McCormick returned to his job. Later that day, McCormick reported to AT & T that he had been made the subject of a personal remark related to the letter retrieved from the trash by his co-workers. AT & T transferred McCormick to an area where he could work alone. Nonetheless, McCormick left the building later that evening never to return. AT & T terminated McCormick’s employment for job abandonment effective October 3, 1986.

In December, 1987, McCormick filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Henrico County, Virginia, against AT & T and Allen, alleging that under Virginia tort law the company’s actions in disposing of the contents of his locker constituted intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, conversion, and negligence in the care of a bailment. AT & T petitioned for removal to federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1441 arguing that the federal court had original jurisdiction pursuant to § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”). AT & T subsequently moved for summary judgment asserting that McCormick’s claims were preempted by § 301 of the LMRA, and that any claims McCormick might have had under § 301 were barred by his failure to exhaust his contractual remedies and by the applicable statute of limitations. McCormick moved to remand the action to state court and filed a memorandum in opposition to AT & T’s summary judgment motion.

On March 29, 1988, the district court denied McCormick’s motion to remand. It found that McCormick’s state law claims were preempted and therefore properly removed to federal court. The district court granted AT & T’s motion for summary judgment because McCormick’s claims were time barred by the six-month statute of limitations governing § 301 actions.

McCormick appeals, and we affirm.

II.

McCormick concedes, as he must, that if his state law claims are preempted by § 301 of the LMRA, then the district court acted correctly in granting AT & T’s motion for summary judgment. This is so because if the state law claims are preempted, it is plain that the ease was properly removed to federal court, see Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 393-94, 107 S.Ct. 2425, 2430-31, 96 L.Ed.2d 318 (1987); Avco Corp. v. Aero Lodge No. 735, 390 U.S. 557, 560-62, 88 S.Ct. 1235, 1237-38, 20 L.Ed.2d 126 (1968), and that any federal claims McCormick might have had were barred by § 301’s six-month statute of limitations, see DelCostello v. International Bhd. of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 169, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 2293, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983); Kirby v. Allegheny Beverage Corp., 811 F.2d 253, 256 (4th Cir.1987).

Thus, the only question is whether McCormick’s state law claims are preempted by § 301. For the reasons that follow, we hold that his state law claims are indeed preempted.

A.

Section 301 of the LMRA provides:

Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this chapter, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.

29 U.S.C. § 185(a). Section 301 not only provides federal courts with jurisdiction over employment disputes covered by collective bargaining agreements, but also directs federal courts to fashion a body of federal common law to resolve such disputes. See AllisChalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 209, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 1910, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985). Moreover, “the preemptive force of § 301 is so powerful as to displace entirely any state cause of action ‘for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization.’ ” Franchise Tax Bd. v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust, 463 U.S. 1, 23, 103 S.Ct. 2841, 2853, 77 L.Ed.2d 420 (1983). “State Law is thus ‘pre-empted’ by § 301 in that only the federal law fashioned by the courts under § 301 governs the interpretation and application of collective bargaining agreements.” United Steelworkers of America v. Rawson, — U.S.-, 110 S.Ct. 1904, 1909, 109 L.Ed.2d 362 (1990).

In Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988), the Supreme Court reit erated its test to determine exactly when state laws are preempted by § 301. Consistent with its approach in earlier cases, the Court in Lingle emphasized that “state law is pre-empted by § 301 ... only if such application requires the interpretation of a collective-bargaining agreement.” Id. 108 S.Ct. at 1885; see also IBEW, AFL-CIO v. Hechler, 481 U.S. 851, 863 n. 5, 107 S.Ct. 2161, 2168-69 n. 5, 95 L.Ed.2d 791 (1987) (approving preemption where plaintiff conceded that “[t]he nature and scope of the duty of care owed Plaintiff is determined by reference to the collective bargaining agreement”); Allis-Chalmers, 471 U.S. at 220, 105 S.Ct. at 1915-16 (approving preemption if application of state law “substantially depend[s] upon analysis of the terms of an agreement made between the parties in a labor contract”). Thus, the question in preemption analysis is not whether the source of a cause of action is state law, but whether resolution of the cause of action requires interpretation of a collective bargaining agreement. This approach advances § 301’s goal of “ensuring] uniform interpretation of collective bargaining agreements, and thus ... promoting] the peaceable, consistent resolution of labor-management disputes.” Lingle, 108 S.Ct. at 1880 (discussing Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U.S. 95, 82 S.Ct. 571, 7 L.Ed.2d 593 (1962)).

Section 301 does not, however, displace entirely state law in the labor relations context. “[A] State may provide [substantive rights] to workers when adjudication of those rights does not depend upon the interpretation of [collective bargaining] agreements.” Lingle, 108 S.Ct. at 1883. The Lingle Court made clear that mere parallelism between the facts and issues to be addressed under a state law claim and those to be addressed under § 301 does not render the state-law analysis dependent on the collective bargaining agreement. Thus, “even if dispute resolution pursuant to a collective-bargaining agreement, on the one hand, and state law, on the other, would require addressing precisely the same set of facts, as long as the state-law claim can be resolved without interpreting the agreement itself, the claim is ‘independent’ of the agreement for § 301 pre-emption purposes.” Id.

Following the analysis of the Supreme Court in Lingle, we next examine the elements of the state law causes of action advanced by McCormick so that we may determine whether resolution of his state law claims requires interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement.

B.

McCormick maintains that management actions in disposing of the contents of his locker amount to intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, conversion, and negligence in the care of a bailment. Under Virginia tort law, a necessary element of each of McCormick’s causes of action is an allegation of some sort of wrongful conduct. The intentional infliction of emotional distress cause of action requires that the defendant’s conduct be “outrageous and intolerable.” Womack v. Eldridge, 215 Va. 338, 210 S.E.2d 145, 148 (1974). The negligent infliction of emotional distress action requires, obviously enough, that defendant have engaged in negligent conduct. See Hughes v. Moore, 214 Va. 27, 197 S.E.2d 214, 219 (1973). Virginia law defines conversion as “any wrongful exercise or assumption of authority, personally or by procurement, over another’s goods, depriving him of their possession.” Buckeye Nat’l Bank v. Huff & Cook, 114 Va. 1, 75 S.E. 769, 772 (1912) (emphasis added). Finally, for negligence in the care of a bailment to exist, defendant must have negligently failed in the “duty to account for the thing as the property of another_” K-B Corp. v. Gallagher, 218 Va. 381, 237 S.E.2d 183, 185 (1977).

In addition, Virginia follows the general rule that plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating wrongfulness. “In a negligence action, it is the plaintiff’s burden to prove how and why the accident happened.” Hoffner v. Kreh, 227 Va. 48, 313 S.E.2d 656, 658 (1984). Such wrongfulness cannot be determined in a vacuum. Rather, “[t]he degree of care required ... varies according to the circumstances of each case.” Holland v. Edelblute, 179 Va. 685, 20 S.E.2d 506, 507 (1942). “Outrageousness” for purposes of intentional infliction of emotional distress is also not an independent, nonnegotiable standard of behavior. Miller v. AT & T Network Systems, 850 F.2d 543 (9th Cir.1988). Here, as elsewhere, “[t]he conduct of the reasonable person will vary with the situation with which he is confronted.” Prosser & Keeton on Torts § 32, at 175 (5th ed. 1984). To prove conduct wrongful, a plaintiff must thus demonstrate not that the conduct was wrongful in some abstract sense, but wrongful under the circumstances.

The circumstances that must be considered in examining management’s conduct are not merely factual, but contractual, and the collective bargaining agreement is a crucial component of these circumstances. Cleaning out a locker is not a matter of intrinsic moral import but a question of legal authority — whether management had the lawful right to proceed as it did. The rightness or wrongness of the action has not been committed to the common law of tort, but to the legal arrangements embodied in a contractual agreement, in this case through collective bargaining. State tort claims are preempted where reference to a collective bargaining agreement is necessary to determine whether a “duty of care” exists or to define “the nature and scope of that duty, that is, whether, and to what extent, the [employer’s] duty extended to the particular responsibilities alleged by [the employee] in h[is] complaint.” Heckler, 481 U.S. at 862, 107 S.Ct. at 2168. Whether the actions of management personnel in disposing of the contents of McCormick’s locker were in any way wrongful simply cannot be determined without examining the collective bargaining agreement to ascertain the extent of any duty AT & T may have owed him.

Although management’s rights and responsibilities regarding employee lockers are not explicitly delineated in the agreement, a collective bargaining agreement “is more than a contract; it is a generalized code to govern a myriad of cases which the draftsmen cannot wholly anticipate.” United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 578, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 1351, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960). There are several general provisions in the collective bargaining agreement between AT & T and the union which are relevant to the resolution of employee complaints such as McCormick’s. For example, a clause entitled “Management of the Business” states that “[t]he right to manage the business and to direct the working forces and operations of the same, subject to the limitations of this agreement, is exclusively vested in, and retained by, the Company.” The agreement also establishes a grievance process to handle all employee disputes “arising with respect to wages, hours of work and other conditions of employment.” The agreement specifies that employees have the right to present their complaints either to management or the union, and provides for formal arbitration procedures under which “[a]ny dispute arising between the union and the company with respect to interpretation of any provision of this Agreement or the performance of any obligation hereunder may be referred, during the life of this Agreement, to an arbitrator.”

These provisions of the collective bargaining agreement apply generally to the conditions of employment for union employees at AT & T. The issuance of work lockers and tools by the company plainly is among these conditions of employment. The specifics as to management conduct regarding the lockers and tools need not be speíled out in all their detail and refinement for the collective bargaining agreement to be applicable. Rather, the collective bargaining agreement consists, in addition to its express provisions, of an “industrial common law — the practices, of the industry and the shop — [which] is equally a part of the collective bargaining agreement although not expressed in it.” United Steelworkers, 363 U.S. at 581-82, 80 S.Ct. at 1352. “There are too many people, too many problems, too many unforeseeable contingencies to make the words of the contract the exclusive source of rights and duties.... [T]he governmental nature of the collective-bargaining process demandfs] a common law of the shop which implements and furnishes the context of the agreement.” Id. at 579, 80 S.Ct. at 1351 (quoting Cox, Reflections Upon Labor Arbitration, 72 Harv.L.Rev. 1482, 1498-99 (1959)). Thus, the agreement creates in employees and their employers implied rights and duties, the contours of which are a matter “of federal contract interpretation.” AllisChalmers, 471 U.S. at 215, 105 S.Ct. at 1913. Here, interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement is essential to determine whether and to what extent AT & T owed McCormick a duty concerning his work locker. If management owed him no duty and was entitled under the agreement to dispose of the contents of his locker in the manner it did, its actions ipso facto could not have been wrongful under state law.

For example, to determine under Virginia law whether an actor’s behavior is “outrageous and intolerable,” and therefore punishable as intentional infliction of emotional distress, requires an inquiry into whether the actor was legally entitled to act as he or she did. “The actor is never liable ... where he has done no more than to insist upon his legal rights in a permissible way, even though he is well aware that such insistence is certain to cause emotional distress.” Restatement (Second) Torts (1965). If management’s actions in disposing of the contents of McCormick’s locker were authorized under the collective bargaining agreement, those actions could not simultaneously be considered “outrageous and intolerable” under Virginia law. Thus, “[bjecause [McCormick’s] intentional infliction of emotional distress claim consists of allegedly wrongful acts directly related to the terms and condition of h[is] employment, resolution of h[is] claim will be substantially dependent on an analysis of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement under which [he] is employed.” Douglas v. American Information Technologies Corp., 877 F.2d 565, 573 (7th Cir.1989); see also Newberry v. Pacific Racing Ass’n, 854 F.2d 1142, 1149-50 (9th Cir.1988); Miller, 850 F.2d at 551. Accordingly, preemption under § 301 is mandated.

McCormick’s three remaining causes of action all arise from the identical incident. Each charges the same management personnel with the same wrongful conduct. Each focuses upon the justification for AT & T management to clean out McCormick’s locker as it did. Just as the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim clearly requires interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement to determine whether the alleged conduct was “outrageous and intolerable,” so do each of the other charges require recourse to the agreement to determine whether the alleged conduct was “negligent” or “wrongful.” “When a court is called upon to decide whether an employer acted reasonably, the possibility that the [collective bargaining agreement] permitted the employer’s behavior would strongly support the claim of reasonableness, unless the state had imposed some specific standard disallowing agreements that permit such behavior.” Miller, 850 F.2d at 549. Management simply could not have acted negligently or wrongfully if it acted in a manner contemplated by the collective bargaining agreement. Thus, just as the necessity of construing the collective bargaining agreement dictates that the intentional infliction tort claim be preempted, so too it dictates that the three associated claims likewise be preempted.

C.

Our holding that McCormick’s state law claims are preempted by § 301 is consistent with the holding of the Seventh Circuit in Douglas v. American Information Technologies Corp., 877 F.2d 565 (7th Cir.1989), and the holding of the Ninth Circuit in Newberry v. Pacific Racing Ass’n, 854 F.2d 1142 (9th Cir.1988). In these cases, both decided post-Lingle, the Seventh and Ninth Circuits considered and rejected claims by employees that their state law intentional infliction of emotional distress claims were not preempted by § 301. As the Seventh Circuit stated:

Because [the employee’s] intentional infliction of emotional distress claim consists of allegedly wrongful acts directly related to the terms and conditions of her employment, resolution of her claim will be substantially dependent on an analysis of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement under which she is employed. A court will be required to determine whether her employer’s conduct was authorized by the explicit or implicit terms of the agreement. Therefore, we hold that [the employee’s] state-law claim is preempted and must be pursued as a section 301 claim.

Douglas, 877 F.2d at 573; see also Newberry, 854 F.2d at 1149-50 (“A determination of the validity of [plaintiffs] emotional distress claim will require us to decide whether her discharge was justified under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Her claim therefore cannot be decided without interpreting or analyzing the terms of the agreement. It is therefore preempted ... ”). Moreover, the analysis in both Douglas and Newberry comports in all respects with the § 301 preemption jurisprudence in the Seventh and Ninth circuits. See, e.g., Sluder v. United Mine Workers, 892 F.2d 549 (7th Cir.1989); Laws v. Calmat, 852 F.2d 430 (9th Cir.1988); Utility Workers v. Southern California Edison Corp., 852 F.2d 1083 (9th Cir.1988); Hyles v. Mensing, 849 F.2d 1213 (9th Cir.1988).

In addition, our holding follows the prior decisions of this circuit in Willis v. Reynolds Metals Co., 840 F.2d 254 (4th Cir.1988), and Kirby v. Allegheny Beverage Corp., 811 F.2d 253 (4th Cir.1987). In Willis we held preempted an employee’s state law privacy, slander, and intentional infliction claims arising out of her employer’s investigation of possible employee harassment and its confrontation of the suspected employee. We stated that the state tort claims were preempted because they “purported] to give meaning to the terms of the labor contract.” Willis, 840 F.2d at 255. Similarly, in Kirby we held that an employee’s state law invasion of privacy claim arising out of his submission to a search of his person by his employer was preempted because recourse to the collective bargaining agreement was necessary to determine whether the employer was authorized to require such a search. See Kirby, 811 F.2d at 155-56. Because resolution of the state law claims in each of these cases required analysis of the collective bargaining agreements, the claims were preempted by § 301. The results in these cases are consistent with the result reached by the Supreme Court in Lingle, and the cases therefore retain their vitality after that decision.

There are few workplace quarrels that could not be framed as some form of tor-tious conduct. Our holding that McCormick’s state law claims are preempted by § 301 protects the continued vitality of grievance procedures as a fair and efficient means for the resolution of labor disputes, and it also furthers the uniformity concerns underlying § 301. The Supreme Court has noted that “[t]he possibility that individual contract terms might have different meanings under state and federal law would inevitably exert a disruptive influence upon both the negotiation and administration of collective agreements.” Lucas Flour, 369 U.S. at 103, 82 S.Ct. at 577. In this case, the collective bargaining agreement between AT & T and the union covers employees in several states. To exempt McCormick’s claims from preemption would be to invite the courts of these states to give conflicting constructions to the single collective bargaining agreement in determining whether management conduct is wrongful.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we hold that McCormick’s state law tort claims are preempted by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act. Any claims he may have had under § 301 are barred by the statute’s six-month statute of limitations. See Delcostello, 462 U.S. at 169, 103 S.Ct. at 2293. The judgment of the district court is

AFFIRMED.