Opinion ID: 329281
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Without Foundation in Reason or in Fact Argument

Text: 27 Plaintiff contends that the Board ignored evidence in support of appellant's claim and that this evidence of coercion was unrebutted by any evidence of record. As noted earlier in this opinion, there were differing accounts of the crucial conversation in the record and the Referee found plaintiff's evidence of coercion unpersuasive. This is exactly the type of determination that Congress intended to be left to the Adjustment Board without judicial review. On the record in this case, it is impossible for us to say that the Board's decision was either actually and undisputedly without foundation in reason or in fact or wholly baseless and without reason and thus outside the matter of the Division's jurisdiction. See discussion supra at 575. Consequently, this claim of plaintiff must fail. 28 In his final attack under the without foundation argument, plaintiff asserts that the Referee wrongly chose to apply the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of proof. 5 It is unclear from his opinion that the Referee actually employed that standard, but, as already noted, this would not be an unprecedented act. Furthermore, assuming that the preponderance of evidence test was not but should have been applied, our study of the record before the Board satisfies us that the Referee could properly find that plaintiff did not prove coercion. Congress clearly intended that the awards of the Adjustment Board be as unassailable as those of an arbitrator. The Board was expected to exercise its expertise in matters of railroad labor disputes, and Congress did not intend for the courts to maintain a check on each procedural and substantive ruling of the Board. Nowhere in the Railway Labor Act is the Board confined to a particular standard of proof. Therefore, it would have been improper for the district court on the facts before it in this case to have invaded the province of the Board on the possibility that a burden greater than plaintiff desires was imposed. 29