Opinion ID: 439051
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jury Trial of the LMRDA Claims

Text: 32 The defendants argue that the essence of Quinn's action under the LMRDA was one for reinstatement to union membership, and that his claims for damages were merely incidental to that equitable claim. They rely heavily on McCraw v. United Association of Journeymen, 341 F.2d 705 (6th Cir.1965), which held that no jury trial was available in an action under the LMRDA Bill of Rights for both equitable relief and damages. But in Hildebrand v. Board of Trustees of Michigan State University, 607 F.2d 705, 708 & n. 4 (6th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 910, 102 S.Ct. 1760, 72 L.Ed.2d 168 (1982), and Shimman v. Frank, 625 F.2d 80, 101 & n. 42 (6th Cir.1980), the Sixth Circuit sharply questioned the soundness of its own holding in McCraw, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's subsequent decisions in Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 90 S.Ct. 733, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970), and Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 94 S.Ct. 1005, 39 L.Ed.2d 260 (1974). 33 In Ross v. Bernhard, which concerned a stockholders' derivative action, the Court held that where equitable and legal claims are joined in the same action there is a right to a jury trial on the legal claims which must not be infringed by trying the legal issues as incidental to the equitable ones. 396 U.S. at 537-38, 90 S.Ct. at 738 (1970). In Curtis v. Loether, the Court held with respect to federal housing discrimination claims that the seventh amendment right to a jury trial applied to statutory claims if the statute creates legal rights and remedies, enforceable in an action for damages in the ordinary courts of laws. 415 U.S. at 194, 94 S.Ct. at 1008. The fair housing statute simply define[d] a new legal duty, and authorize[d] the courts to compensate a plaintiff for the injury caused by the defendant's wrongful breach. Id. at 195, 94 S.Ct. at 1009. Every other circuit court that has considered the availability of a jury trial for claims under the LMRDA has disagreed with McCraw and concluded that there is a right to a jury trial on a claim for damages under the LMRDA Bill of Rights, whether or not equitable relief is also requested. See, e.g., Feltington v. Motion Picture Operators Local 306, 605 F.2d 1251, 1257 (2d Cir.1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 943, 100 S.Ct. 2169, 64 L.Ed.2d 799 (1980); Simmons v. Avisco, Local 713, 350 F.2d 1012, 1018 (4th Cir.1965). Cf. International Brotherhood of Boilermakers v. Braswell, 388 F.2d 193, 197-98 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 391 U.S. 935, 88 S.Ct. 1848, 20 L.Ed.2d 854 (1968) (only damages requested; reserving question of right to jury trial where equitable relief also requested). 34 We are persuaded by the reasoning of those cases. The LMRDA Bill of Rights, in creating a set of duties of unions toward their members and in providing for enforcement through civil suits for, in part, damages resulting from breach of those duties, created a new cause of action sounding in tort. Quinn's legal claims for damages--lost wages, mental distress, harm to reputation, etc.--proximately caused by conduct in breach of the legal duties imposed on unions and their officers by the LMRDA were not mere insubstantial appendages to his prayer for equitable relief. Under the reasoning laid down in Ross v. Bernhard and Curtis v. Loether, Quinn was entitled to a jury trial of those claims. 35