Opinion ID: 685663
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Proper Characterization of AWPA Claims for State Law Borrowing Purposes

Text: 14 Our first task is to determine whether a single characterization of all claims under the AWPA is mandated by the statute. 4 The Supreme Court has interpreted federal statutes lacking limitation periods to require a uniform borrowing rule only on rare occasions. 15 In a number of cases, the Court has mandated adoption of a uniform limitations period from another federal statute. See, e.g., DelCostello v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 172, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 2294, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983) (adopting six-month statute of limitations contained in section 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act for employee claims against unions alleging breach of collective bargaining agreements); Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Assocs. Inc., 483 U.S. 143, 107 S.Ct. 2759, 97 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987) (adopting four-year statute of limitations contained in Clayton Act for RICO civil enforcement actions). The Court has emphasized, however, that such an approach is proper only when a rule from elsewhere in federal law clearly provides a closer analogy than available state law statutes, and when the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation make that rule a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking. Reed v. United Transp. Union, 488 U.S. 319, 324, 109 S.Ct. 621, 625, 102 L.Ed.2d 665 (1989). In the present case, the appellants have not suggested that another federal statute clearly provides a closer analogy than available state law statutes, and we are not aware of one. 16 The Supreme Court also has interpreted federal statutes lacking limitations periods to require adoption of a uniform state law borrowing source. See Wilson, 471 U.S. at 276, 105 S.Ct. at 1947 (holding that Congress intended courts to adopt a single state law source for claims under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983); Reed, 488 U.S. at 324, 109 S.Ct. at 625 (holding that Congress intended courts to adopt a single state law source for claims under 29 U.S.C. Sec. 411(a)(2)). In reaching this result in those cases, the Supreme Court first analyzed closely the text and legislative histories of the statutes in issue for indication of congressional intent. Additionally, the Court examined the range of potential claims that could have been brought under the statutes. 5 17 In Rivera, however, we did not engage in such an analysis. Instead, we characterized the claim before us in state law terms and applied the California provision governing actions most directly analogous to the plaintiff's action under the disclosure and recordkeeping provisions of the AWPA. 6 Although we did not consider expressly in Rivera whether Congress intended a uniform characterization of AWPA claims, our approach assumes the absence of any such intent. 18 In addition, we note that the AWPA contains none of the indices of congressional intent that the Supreme Court deemed decisive in Wilson and Reed. Unlike 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, the AWPA does not contain an express directive to give preeminence to federal law; unlike the federal statutory provision at issue in Reed, the AWPA does not have as its core purpose the protection of constitutional values in an arena traditionally the domain of federal law. Although the AWPA encompasses requirements relating to information and recordkeeping, worker health and safety, as well as enforcement of contractual working arrangements, the difficulty of characterizing any particular AWPA action in state law terms is in no way comparable to the difficulties of characterization in the Sec. 1983 context. Prior to concluding that case-by-case characterization of Sec. 1983 claims could lead to a morass of secondary litigation foreign to the central purposes of Sec. 1983, id. at 272, 105 S.Ct. at 1945, the Wilson Court emphasized the broad diversity of claims that had been litigated under the provision, noting that [a] catalog of ... constitutional claims that have been alleged under Sec. 1983 would encompass numerous and diverse topics and subtopics. Comparable dangers are not present in the AWPA context. 19 In sum, we find no indication that Congress intended that courts adopt a uniform state law borrowing source for AWPA actions, and Rivera does not so hold. Cf. United Auto. Workers, 383 U.S. at 705 n. 7, 86 S.Ct. at 1113 n. 7 (1966) (applying Indiana's six-year statute of limitations for contracts not in writing to an action brought under Sec. 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, but expressly reserving judgment on whether other Sec. 301 suits different from the present one might call for the application of other rules on timeliness); Dreher v. Amphitheater Unified Sch. Dist., 22 F.3d 228, 232 (9th Cir.1994) (applying Arizona's one-year statute of limitations contained in A.R.S. Sec. 12-541 to plaintiffs' action under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1415(e), but noting that under other circumstances a different borrowing source might be appropriate for a claim under the same federal provision). 20