Opinion ID: 439951
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Wage Rate for Hypothetical Combined Cabin Attendant Classification

Text: 67 NWA strenuously contends that if it had not maintained the sex-segregated job classifications of purser and stewardess and had, instead, used only a single cabin attendant classification, the wage rate paid to employees in that hypothetical classification would have closely approximated the rates paid by other airlines with only a single classification, rather than the premium pay level NWA established for pursers. In support of this proposition, NWA relies upon an affidavit proffered in 1978. See Declaration of Terry M. Erskine, Joint Record Excerpts (J.R.E.) 139. 68 NWA argues that the use of the pursers' pay rate in the back-pay formula, rather than the lower rate which arguably would have been paid to those in the hypothetical, combined cabin attendant classification, violates the bedrock rule that Title VII backpay may not catapult [plaintiffs] into a better position than they would have enjoyed in the absence of discrimination. Ford Motor, supra, 458 U.S. at 234, 102 S.Ct. at 3067. It also argues that Manhart, in particular, establishes that the back-pay remedy here was improper. NWA Brief at 43-44. 69 We disagree. In the first place, and most critically, we do not read these three High Court decisions as establishing any pertinent new rule of law as respects this case under Title VII. The fundamental proposition that the purpose of Title VII remedies is to make whole the victims of discrimination has been settled for some time, see, e.g., Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 421, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 2373, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975), and was clearly recognized by this court in Laffey I. See 567 F.2d at 476 (The remedial order in this case is to make employees whole, but not more than whole.). Therefore, we perceive nothing new, as respects NWA's argument, in these three decisions. 70 We also find unpersuasive NWA's assertion that Manhart compels the abandonment of the back-pay formula affirmed in Laffey I. Above all, Manhart arose out of the extraordinarily sensitive setting of a sex-based contributory system in a pension plan, circumstances far removed from the situation here of treating female employees differently although they performed the same work as male employees. Second, the only language that provides comfort to NWA is set forth in a single footnote, 26 consisting of guardedly worded dicta. Manhart, in contrast to the case before us, disallowed any retroactive monetary award, and in the course of so doing suggested that if such an award had been appropriate, the lower court should at least have considered a different formula. The High Court's understandably deep concern for equitable considerations, including the grave consequences to pension funds flowing from a retroactive finding of liability, strongly suggests that this portion of the Manhart footnote was not addressed to the matter of remedies in garden-variety Title VII cases, such as the case at hand. 27 71 Moreover, in the absence of supervening, controlling authority, NWA cannot properly request--for the first time--that this court mandate the use of averaging techniques in the back-pay formula. 28 As explained supra at p. 1076, the procedural posture of this case at the time of Laffey I enabled review on the merits of all interrelated features of the order save those the District Court had reserved for future adjudication, Laffey II, 642 F.2d at 584 n. 49. The issues reserved by the district court dealt only with the mechanics of payment pursuant to the 1974 Remedial Order. See 374 F.Supp. at 1389. The part of the case that the court reserved obviously did not include the back-pay formula itself, which was clearly set out by the district court, id. at 1385-87 (paragraphs 5-7), and which plainly used the full purser pay rates as the upper end of the back-pay computation. 29 Thus, NWA had the opportunity to appeal any feature of the back-pay award, including the use of the full purser rates, in Laffey I. Therefore, NWA must be deemed to have waived any argument available at that time which it did not assert. 72 Adherence to the rule that a party waives a contention that could have been but was not raised on [a] prior appeal, Munoz v. County of Imperial, 667 F.2d 811, 817 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 825, 103 S.Ct. 58, 74 L.Ed.2d 62 (1982), is, of course, necessary to the orderly conduct of litigation. Failure to follow this rule would lead to the bizarre result, as stated admirably by Judge Friendly, that a party who has chosen not to argue a point on a first appeal should stand better as regards the law of the case than one who had argued and lost. Fogel v. Chestnutt, 668 F.2d 100, 109 (2d Cir.1981), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 828, 103 S.Ct. 65, 74 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982). NWA's failure to challenge the backpay formula on its first appeal resulted in the Laffey I affirmance of that portion of the 1974 Remedial Order, and the inclusion of the formula in the law of the case. See Raxton Corp. v. Anania Associates, Inc., 668 F.2d 622, 624 (1st Cir.1982).