Opinion ID: 772828
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Propriety Of Award Of Attorneys' Fees

Text: 52 Having found that the defendant unions can indeed assert § 7 rights in a situation such as that presented here, and having determined that BE&K committed an unfair labor practice by filing a meritless suit against the unions with a retaliatory motivation, we must still determine whether the Board was within its power in awarding attorneys' fees to the unions to compensate them for defending against BE&K's filings. The plain language of the National Labor Relations Act and of the Supreme Court's Bill Johnson's decision, as well as the underlying purposes of national labor legislation, demand an affirmative response. 53 BE&K relies upon dicta in the Sixth Circuit's decision in Johnson & Hardin for the proposition that the harsh remedy of a grant of attorneys' fees should be invoked only to discourage future frivolous litigation. Johnson & Hardin, 49 F.3d at 244. Such dicta, however, was discussed in a situation in which the employer was found not to have committed a Bill Johnson's unfair labor practice. Any discussion of the propriety of an attorneys' fee award in that case was thus without force or effect in future decisions. Moreover, the authorities cited by this court in Johnson & Hardin for the proposition now espoused by BE&K were decisions pre-dating the Supreme Court's Bill Johnson's ruling. 54 By contrast, in Bill Johnson's itself, the Court specifically, and without further qualification, stated that, if a violation[of § 7 rights in a scenario like that presented in this appeal] is found, the Board may order the employer to reimburse the [parties] whom he had wrongfully sued for their attorney's fees and other expenses. It may also order any other proper relief that would effectuate the policies of the Act. Bill Johnson's, 461 U.S. at 747 (emphasis added) 4 . Moreover, the Court had previously explained: 55 The Board's power [to fashion remedies under 29 U.S.C. § 160(c)] is a broad discretionary one, subject to limited judicial review. The relation of remedy to policy is peculiarly a matter for administrative competence. In fashioning remedies to undo the effects of violations of the Act, the Board must draw on enlightenment gained from experience. The Board's order will not be disturbed unless it can be shown that the order is a patent attempt to achieve ends other than those which can fairly be said to effectuate the policies of the Act. 56 Fibreboard Paper Prods. Corp. v. NLRB, 379 U.S. 203, 216 (1964) (citations and internal punctuation omitted). See alsoGeske & Sons, 103 F.3d at 1378. 57 In light of the indisputable rulings in these two Supreme Court decisions, if we were to refuse to enforce the Board's order that BE&K reimburse the unions for their attorneys' fees, we would be crossing the line demarcating not only the division of functions of the judicial and executivebranches of government, but also the line dividing judicial and legislative areas of authority. The Board's order in this matter could never be construed as a patent attempt to frustrate the policies of the Act. In fact, the award of attorneys' fees is nothing more than an effort to correct the effects of BE&K's unfair labor practice by returning the injured parties, at least in part, to the financial positions they occupied prior to the filing of the company's unmerited, retaliatory suit. Moreover, the award replenishing union coffers serves the laudable goal of benefitting a broad range of laborers whose dues dollars initially financed the defense of the federal court action and who stand to benefit from the unions' attempts to enforce health, safety, and zoning regulations. 58 Furthermore, adherence to the policy advocated by BE&K to reserve attorneys' fee awards to those cases in which the non-prevailing party pursued a frivolous, as opposed to a merely unmeritorious, action evidences a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of the attorneys' fee award in this instance. As stated by the Board in its ruling: 59 We do not award attorneys' fees in Bill Johnson's cases because employers' suits are frivolous. We award them because the suits are unlawful; they themselves constitute the unfair labor practices for which a remedy must be provided. As the court of appeals correctly observed in Geske & Sons, the Unions would not have incurred those attorneys' fees except for the Respondent's meritless lawsuit, and it is both appropriate and necessary to order that they be made whole and to provide an economic disincentive for engaging in similar unlawful conduct. 60 BE&K Constr. Co., 329 NLRB No. 68 at 12 (Sept. 30, 1999). 61 Our review of remedial action ordered by the Board is extremely limited. Because the award of attorneys' fees to the unions in this matter upon the finding of an unfair labor practice is inherently consistent with the underlying purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, any attempt to undo the administrative sanction would unnecessarily intrude upon the province of a co-equal branch of government acting within constitutional parameters.