Opinion ID: 421798
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the merits of the appellants' petition

Text: 85 Now at last we can bring our analysis to bear on the case at bar. The appellants' principal contention on appeal is that the District Court erred in denying them attorneys' fees under section 2412(d)(1)(A) on the ground that the position taken by the NLRB was substantially justified. In addition, they challenge the District Court's judgment that the Board did not act in bad faith in pursuing the litigation, and therefore was not liable for fees under section 2412(b). We consider those contentions in order below.
86 For the reasons indicated in Part II.B. supra, the position of the United States, whose justification must be assessed, is the position taken by the Board in litigation before the District Court. That position was stated succinctly in the penultimate paragraph of the memorandum submitted by the Board in support of its motion for summary judgment: 87 In summary, since the Board failed to contravene any express statutory command in denying plaintiffs' decertification petition or unit clarification petition, this Court should decline to exert jurisdiction to review the Board's actions under Leedom v. Kyne. 93 88 To assess the strength of this argument, we must retrace the analytical path the Board itself traveled in its memorandum. 89 As the Board recognized, the touchstone of this controversy is the doctrine enunciated by the Supreme Court in Leedom v. Kyne, 358 U.S. 184, 79 S.Ct. 180, 3 L.Ed. 210 (1958). Ordinarily, determinations by the NLRB in representation proceedings are not subject to direct judicial review; only if such determinations form the basis of final orders issued in subsequent unfair labor practice proceedings can they be challenged in the courts. Boire v. Greyhound Corp., 376 U.S. 473, 476-77, 84 S.Ct. 894, 896, 11 L.Ed.2d 849 (1964); May Department Stores v. NLRB, 326 U.S. 376, 379, 66 S.Ct. 203, 206, 90 L.Ed. 145 (1945); AFL v. NLRB, 308 U.S. 401, 409, 60 S.Ct. 300, 304, 84 L.Ed. 347 (1940). In Leedom v. Kyne, the Court carved out a very narrow exception to this general principle: when the Board acts in a manner that contravenes an express statutory prohibition and the aggrieved party has no alternative way of securing relief, a district court has the authority to review the Board's determination. 358 U.S. at 188-90, 79 S.Ct. at 183-84. As this and other courts have repeatedly emphasized, the doctrine enunciated in Kyne may be invoked only in extraordinary circumstances. 90 [T]o say that there are possible infirmities in an action taken by the Board by reason of an erroneous or arbitrary exertion of its authority in respect of the facts before it is not to conclude that there is jurisdiction in the District Court to intervene by injunction. For such jurisdiction to exist, the Board must have stepped so plainly beyond the bounds of the Act, or acted so clearly in defiance of it, as to warrant the immediate intervention of an equity court even before the Board's own processes have run their course. 91 Local 130, International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers v. McCulloch, 345 F.2d 90, 95 (D.C.Cir.1965); accord Boire v. Greyhound Corp., 376 U.S. at 481, 84 S.Ct. at 898; Modern Plastics Corp. v. McCulloch, 400 F.2d 14, 17 (6th Cir.1968); Machinery, Scrap Iron, Metal & Steel Chauffeurs, Local Union No. 714 v. Madden, 343 F.2d 497, 499 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 822, 86 S.Ct. 53, 15 L.Ed.2d 69 (1965). 92 In their complaint, the appellants pointed to section 9(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (as amended) as an express statutory limitation on the Board's power, and argued that the Board's transgression of that boundary warranted exercise of jurisdiction by the District Court. That section directs the Board to define units of employees appropriate for collective bargaining purposes but provides that: 93 the Board shall not ... decide that any unit is appropriate for such purposes if such unit includes both professional employees and employees who are not professional employees unless a majority of such professional employees vote for inclusion in such unit .... 94 94 The Board responded that its refusal to grant the appellants the forms of relief they originally requested was not so clearly proscribed by this provision as to justify intervention by the District Court. The Board offered two main arguments in support of its position. First, it insisted that the statute only forbids it to decide  that a unit containing both professionals and non-professionals is appropriate for collective bargaining. 95 But, so the Board argued, in the instant case it never decided that such a unit was appropriate; it merely refused to reconsider the appropriateness of a unit that had been established long ago (and before the enactment of the proviso in question) through the voluntary action of the Company and the Union. Consequently, it violated no statutory mandate. 95 Second, the Board claimed that its interpretation of the statutory proviso is supported by important policy considerations that underlie the National Labor Relations Act as a whole. The Board's general obligation under the Act is to promote two goals: (1) employees' freedom of choice in deciding whether they want to engage in collective bargaining and whom they wish to represent them; and (2) the maintenance of established, stable bargaining relationships. See J.I. Case Co. v. NLRB, 321 U.S. 332, 338-39, 64 S.Ct. 576, 580-81, 88 L.Ed. 762 (1944). When those goals conflict, the Board's job is to strike a sensible balance between them. The Board argued that its interpretation of its power and duty, under section 9(b), to accommodate the desires of disgruntled professionals is shaped by its overarching statutory mandates; it has adopted a set of policies designed to maximize the freedom of choice of both professional and non-professional employees while minimizing the potential for needless disruption of existing bargaining relationships. Thus, it is willing to accord groups of professional employees separate self-determination elections in contexts in which such a proceeding would contribute to overall improvement of a bargaining relationship: when either an employer or a union petitions for a representation election in an overall mixed unit, see Westinghouse Electric Corp. (X-Ray & Industrial Electronics Div.), 129 N.L.R.B. 846, 847-48 (1960); Westinghouse Electric Corp., 116 N.L.R.B. 1545, 1547 (1956), and when a rival union petitions for an election designed to sever a group of professionals from an existing mixed unit, see Westinghouse Electric Corp. (Small Motor Div.), 111 N.L.R.B. 497, 501 (1955); S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Co., 109 N.L.R.B. 1117, 1123 (1954); Union Switch & Signal Co., 76 N.L.R.B. 205, 209 (1948). But the Board will not order a separate election when professionals, through a decertification petition, seek merely to be unrepresented. See Retail Clerks Union Local No. 324 (Vincent Drugs), 144 N.L.R.B. 1247, 1252 (1963) (dicta); Westinghouse Electric Corp., 115 N.L.R.B. 530, 532-33 (1956); Great Falls Employers Council, Inc., 114 N.L.R.B. 370, 371 (1955). In the last-mentioned context, the value of preserving an existing, generally satisfactory bargaining relationship, the Board maintains, overbalances the value of allowing the professionals complete freedom of choice. 96 Did the District Court err in concluding that the foregoing arguments were substantially justified? Before addressing that question, we observe that the facts of this controversy are undisputed and that the District Court's evaluation of the strength of the Board's position derived solely from the court's assessment of the Board's legal arguments. Under these circumstances, we are obliged to examine closely the District Court's determinations. See Part II.D. supra. 97 We conclude that, under the standards set forth in Part II.C. supra for measurement of the force of the government's arguments, the Board's litigation position (founded on the jurisdictional arguments gleaned from Leedom v. Kyne ) was clearly substantially justified. The Board's parsing of the word decide in the statutory proviso we find sufficiently plausible to support a substantially justified claim that the District Court should not exercise jurisdiction. And the Board's argument that any ambiguity in the statutory language should be resolved in its favor, in view of the nature of its general obligations under its enabling act, we conclude falls within the bounds of reasonableness. 96 98 Any doubts we might have concerning the foregoing conclusions are dispelled by reference to the three criteria enunciated in Part II.C. supra for deciding borderline cases. First, the Board's litigation position certainly was not inconsistent with any clearly established law; at the time the Board took and defended its position in litigation, no court had held that Section 9(b)(1) so clearly requires the Board to hold a separate decertification election upon the petition of a group of professional employees as to allow a district court to exert jurisdiction in order to compel the Board to do so if it refuses. Second, litigation of the issues raised by the Board was not likely to be difficult or time-consuming; the parties submitted short memoranda in support of their motions for summary judgment and, had the Board not reversed its position while the case was pending, it is likely that the District Court would soon have ruled on the motions. Third, the position taken by the Board certainly did not constitute a departure from established policy; since at least 1955, the Board had consistently refused to grant decertification elections in units not coterminous with existing bargaining units, regardless of whether the existing units had been established originally pursuant to an election or through the voluntary consent of an employer and a union, and regardless of whether the professional employees in the unit had ever been accorded a separate self-determination election. 97 Therefore, this was not a case where the appellants were singled out for unduly harsh or disparate treatment by the government. 99 It is important to recognize that, in this case, we need not speculate much about the Board's position on the merits of the appellants' claim. This is so because the Board's litigation position--grounded on Leedom v. Kyne--was well founded and very likely would have barred the District Court from accepting jurisdiction over the appellants' suit. Indeed, on the facts of this case, even if the Board itself had conceded that its long-standing policy on decertification petitions was patently erroneous, the District Court very likely would not have had jurisdiction to decide the merits. In other words, if the matter had been fully litigated, it is highly doubtful that the appellants could have been prevailing parties because the District Court probably was without authority to hear their case. As it turned out, the appellants were properly found to be prevailing parties because the case was dismissed as moot without a decision on the jurisdictional issue; this does not, however, alter our finding that the government's litigation position was substantially justified. 100 In sum, we agree with the District Court that the litigation position taken by the NLRB was substantially justified and, consequently, that the appellants are not entitled to attorneys' fees under section 2412(d)(1)(A) of the EAJA.
101 The appellants' second contention--that the court erred in concluding that the appellants are not entitled to fees under the now-codified bad faith exception to the American Rule--merits only brief attention. There may be cases in which the assertion of substantially justified legal arguments can fairly be characterized as vexatious, wanton, or oppressive, but this is certainly not one of them. In seeking dismissal under Leedom v. Kyne, the Board was merely asserting a well-established rule limiting the jurisdiction of the district courts to decide representation questions under the NLRA. Even on the merits of the underlying dispute, there is no evidence in the record that the Board was doing anything other than defending a routine application of its longstanding policy for dealing with decertification petitions of the sort submitted by the appellants. The fact that the Board (after a change in its membership) later altered that policy and acceded to the appellants' demands in no way suggests that its original defense of its position was not undertaken in good faith. Accordingly, the District Court properly concluded that the appellants are not entitled to attorneys' fees under section 2412(b) of the EAJA.