Opinion ID: 2576244
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Schaub's case is subject to the six-month statute of limitations applied by the Supreme Court in DelCostello.

Text: In DelCostello, the Supreme Court borrowed the six-month statute of limitations from § 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act [40] and applied it to two cases in which employees sued both the employer and the union. [41] But the DelCostello Court made clear that the six-month statute of limitations applies to suits in which the employee sues only one party, so long as the claim is a hybrid claim. [42] Because Schaub's claim is hybrid, we conclude that it is subject to the six-month statute of limitations from DelCostello. Schaub relies on our decision in Quinn v. Alaska State Employees Ass'n [43] to support his argument that Alaska's three-year statute of limitations for breach of contract actions applies to his claim. In Quinn, we observed that when an employee only sues the employer for breach of a collective bargaining agreement, the state statute of limitation for contract actions applies. [44] However, this reasoning is subject to the caveat that the six-month statute of limitations from DelCostello applies to § 301 claims where the employee must prove that the union breached its duty of fair representation in order to prevail in the claim against the employer. In the Quinn opinion there is no discussion of whether Quinn's claims  for unpaid overtime and penalties  were subject to grievance procedures in the collective bargaining agreement; without such coverage there would be no duty to prove a union breach of its duty of fair representation. [45] Schaub also argues that his case should not be controlled by DelCostello because it is analogous to other cases in which courts have applied state statutes of limitations to labor disputes. Schaub points to Hoosier, a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a state statute of limitations applied to a suit brought by an employee against his employer under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act for breach of a collective bargaining agreement. [46] The Hoosier Court concluded that a uniform federal statute of limitations was not necessary for such cases, observing that [t]he need for uniformity . . . is greatest where its absence would threaten the smooth functioning of those consensual processes that federal labor law is chiefly designed to promote  the formation of the collective agreement and the private settlement of disputes under it. [47] Schaub argues that neither process is implicated in his case because he only contends that the union failed to file a timely grievance on his behalf. But Schaub overlooks the fact that the DelCostello Court distinguished Hoosier on the ground that the claim in Hoosier was a straightforward suit against the employer, rather than a hybrid claim. [48] Unlike the claims in DelCostello and Schaub's claim in the instant case, the suit in Hoosier did not involve an agreement to submit disputes to arbitration. [49] Moreover, the union in Hoosier brought the suit, rather than the employee. [50] Therefore, the claimant in Hoosier did not need to prove a breach of the duty of fair representation on the part of the union in order to prevail against the employer. [51] The DelCostello Court reasoned that the application of the state statute of limitations in Hoosier was based on the obvious and close analogy between a straightforward § 301 suit and an ordinary breach of contract case. [52] The DelCostello Court rejected that analogy for hybrid § 301/fair representation claims, concluding instead that hybrid cases more closely resemble the situation presented by claims under § 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act. [53] Schaub attempts to distinguish his case from Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc. [54] and from Vaca, [55] earlier cases that the DelCostello Court indicated would have been good candidates for the six-month statute of limitations from § 10(b). [56] In Hines, the union took the employees' grievance through the arbitration process. [57] In Vaca, the union filed a grievance on behalf of an employee but failed to take the employee's grievance to arbitration. [58] Schaub contends that his case differs from the cases in DelCostello, Hines, and Vaca because Schaub's union never attempted to settle his dispute. But the DelCostello Court contemplated Schaub's situation when it decided to apply the six-month statute of limitations from § 10(b) rather than state limitations periods for vacating arbitration awards: Application of [a state] arbitration statute seems straightforward enough when a grievance has run its full course, culminating in a formal award by a neutral arbitrator. But the union's breach of duty may consist of a wrongful failure to pursue a grievance to arbitration, . . . or a refusal to pursue it through even preliminary stages. The parallel to vacation of an arbitral award seems tenuous at best in these situations; it is doubtful that many state arbitration statutes would themselves cover such a case in a commercial setting.[ [59] ] Thus, the DelCostello Court contemplated cases similar to Schaub's when it chose to apply the limitations period from § 10(b) instead of state law to hybrid claims. K & L points out that [a]pplying a longer limitations period to hybrid claims involving a union that has declined to file a grievance would provide an incentive for unions to forsake the grievance processes to permit employees to bring separate suit and thereby make an end-run around the private procedures that federal labor law is intended to encourage. An equally important policy consideration in this case is that declining to apply DelCostello would give claimants in Schaub's position an incentive to sue only one defendant in order to avoid application of DelCostello's six-month limitations period. We note that other courts examining this question have held that the six-month statute of limitations applies to all hybrid claims, regardless of whether the claimant sues the union, the employer, or both. [60] Courts that have declined to follow DelCostello have done so only when the cases are not hybrid claims or are not brought under the National Labor Relations Act. [61] For the reasons discussed above, we conclude that Schaub's claim is subject to the six-month statute of limitations that the Supreme Court established for hybrid claims in DelCostello. The DelCostello Court did not specify when a claim accrues for purposes of the statute of limitations, and courts make this determination on a case-by-case basis. [62] In Patterson, we concluded that the limitations period for the employee's hybrid § 301/fair representation suit began running when the employee learned of the arbitrator's adverse decision. [63] We noted that in a suit against a union for breach of the duty of fair representation, the limitations period begins to run when an employee knows or should know of the alleged breach of duty of fair representation by a union. [64] In Schaub's case, the outside date that the limitations period could have accrued was in October 2000, when Schaub met with union representatives who informed him that they would not file a grievance on his behalf. Schaub filed his complaint in the superior court on July 31, 2002, more than a year and a half after his union refused to file his grievance. His claim is therefore barred by the statute of limitations.