Court Opinion

ID: 9473791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:39:40.241465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:44.054568
License: Public Domain

TATE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Despite the brilliant caricature by the majority of the lay arbitrator’s decision, the arbitrator’s opin- . ion squarely decides the only arbitral issue presented — whether Cooper, the discharged employee, had been wrongfully discharged for sitting in a car in which another employee was smoking marijuana, for the alleged violation of a rule that prohibited the employee himself from bringing or consuming marijuana on the plant premises — and squarely finds that Cooper himself had not violated the company rule.
Essentially questioning these arbitral findings, the majority nevertheless finds it to be against public policy to enforce this arbitral award. In support of this holding, the majority not only relies upon its disagreement with the arbitrator’s reasoning, but it also relies upon the circumstance that a non-usable trace of marijuana had been found on a scale in the employee’s car (for which no criminal charges had ever been filed) — a fact unknown to the employer at the time of the discharge, and one which the arbitrator found to be inadmissible as post-hoc justification for the discharge that was based on another cause (aside from the issue of whether a non-usable trace of marijuana (verifiable as such only by microscopic or chemical analysis) in an employee’s car constituted a violation of the company rule against bringing marijuana on the premises).
In their zeal to correct what the majority feels is a mistaken and misreasoned arbitration decision, my conscientious brethren of the majority, I fear, have (for reasons to be stated in parts I and II below) ignored controlling principles of the extremely limited permissible judicial review of such awards, and the extremely limited circum*744stances in which courts may deny enforcement of them. Absorption into the federal courts of greater power to review arbitration awards flouts the national policy favoring contractual resolution of disputes between management and employees and disfavoring detailed judicial monitoring of dispute-resolution under arbitration agreements.
The brilliant and plausible majority opinion does not discuss the governing principles. Perhaps too lengthily, therefore, I will attempt to set them forth and to state how, in my view, the majority erred in failing to apply them in this case.
I.
Under settled principles by which judicial review of arbitration awards is "sharply circumscribed”, Local Union 59, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers v. Green Corporation, 725 F.2d 264, 268 (5th Cir.1984), we cannot question (a) the arbitrator’s factual evaluation of the evidence before him as not proving that Cooper possessed or used marijuana on the plant premises, (b) the arbitrator’s interpretation of the contractual provision as not providing grounds for discharge if Cooper was in a vehicle where someone else was smoking marijuana, or (c) the arbitrator’s procedural ruling that evidence unknown to the employer at the time of the discharge, but subsequently discovered by him, was not probative of the issue before the arbitrator as to whether at the time of the discharge the employer had a contractually valid cause to discharge Cooper. Id., citing and quoting from the Steelworker’s Trilogy: United Steelworkers of America v. American Manufacturing Co., 363 U.S. 564, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403 (1960); United Steelworkers of America v. Warner & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960); United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel and Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960).
These decisions hold that courts may not review an arbitrator’s factual findings or merit determinations and that courts must enforce an arbitrator’s award unless “[1] the dispute was not ‘arguably arbitrable,’ [2] ... the arbitral decision did not draw its essence from the collective bargaining agreement, or [3] ... enforcement of the award by the court would violate public policy.” Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America AFL-CIO, Local Union 540 v. Great Western Food Company, 712 F.2d 122, 123-24 (5th Cir.1983) (citations omitted).
Thus, whether we are inclined to agree with the arbitrator’s rulings or whether, instead, we think they are strained, is immaterial for purposes of judicial review. For these purposes, the arbitrator’s factual finding is conclusive on the courts that Cooper did not possess or use marijuana on the plant premises, or bring it onto them.
II.
In its refusal to enforce the arbitrator’s award, the district court did not disregard these principles. Rather, it refused to afford judicial enforcement of the arbitrator’s award on the ground that its enforcement would be contrary to public policy, a holding affirmed by the majority. In so doing, the district court relied only upon the evidence that the arbitrator had refused to consider: that in Cooper’s car in the plant’s parking lot had been found the brown plastic case containing gleanings determined, on laboratory analysis (eight months later) to be marijuana. The district court concluded that this possession of marijuana not only constituted a violation of criminal law but also of “the company’s rule barring introduction of intoxicants into the work place — a rule that is designed to effectuate the public policy against unsafe operation of heavy equipment by a worker whose judgment has been impaired by intoxicating substances.”
Had the evidence in the arbitration proceeding clearly shown possession of usable marijuana or its use on the plant premises, the district court’s and the majority’s characterization of public policy reasons for non-enforcement of the award would be persuasive. However, although undoubtedly a public policy reason supports non-*745use of marijuana (legally prohibited), no public policy authority is cited to us that an employee who uses marijuana or alcohol in his off-duty hours is unemployable or is without more subject to discharge for such non-employment-related use; however condemnable we might feel is such off-duty conduct by the employee. Cf., e.g., Johns-Mansville Sales Corporation v. International Association of Machinists, Local Lodge 1609, 621 F.2d 756 (5th Cir.1980) (enforcing arbitrator’s award that ordering reinstatement of employees discharged for smoking on company property, despite rejected public policy argument that smoking increases health hazards in the work environment).
In W.R. Grace and Company v. Local Union 759, International Union of the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of America, 461 U.S. 757, 103 S.Ct. 2177, 76 L.Ed.2d 298 (1983), the Supreme Court ordered enforcement of an arbitrator’s decision, rejecting strong public policy arguments that to enforce the award would penalize the employer for its prior compliance with an earlier district court judgment (which subsequently had been reversed on appeal). The Court agreed that “a court may not enforce a collective bargaining agreement that is contrary to public policy” and that “[i]f the contract as interpreted by [the arbitrator] violates some explicit public policy, we are obliged to refrain from enforcing it.” 461 U.S. at 766, 103 S.Ct. at 2183. In rejecting a public-policy-based denial of enforcement, the Court stated that, for public policy reasons to justify the judiciary to deny enforcement of an arbitration, the public policy “must be well defined and dominant, and is to be ascertained ‘by reference to the laws and legal principles and not from general considerations of supposed public interests.’ ” Id.
In finding in the present case that the public policy exception justified denial of judicial enforcement of the arbitrator’s award, the district court (as does the majority) principally relied upon Amalgamated Meat Cutters, supra. in which we noted that “[a] court should exercise extreme caution before declaring that an arbitral award violates public policy,” 712 F.2d at 124, but nevertheless denied enforcement of “the arbitrator’s award in this case, an award which compels the reinstatement to driving duties of a truck driver who admittedly drank while on duty,” on the ground that enforcement would violate the well defined public policy “of preventing people from drinking and driving,” 712 F.2d at 125.
In Amalgamated Meat Cutters, the arbitrator had specifically found that the discharged truck driver (involved in an accident in which his eighteen-wheel rig had overturned) had been drinking on the trip while driving his truck at work. (The arbitrator had nevertheless ordered reinstatement, on the ground that the employer had failed to disprove that a steering mechanism failure, rather than the driver’s drinking, had caused the accident.) Distinguishably from the case now before us, however, in Amalgamated Meat Cutters the arbitrator had specifically found that the truck driver on the job engaged in hazard-creating conduct in violation of public policy (although nevertheless, on technical reasons, the arbitrator had ordered reinstatement).
In the present case, the enforcement of the arbitrator’s award would not, under the principles of extremely limited judicial intervention with regard to arbitration awards, violate the public policy “against unsafe operation of heavy equipment by workers whose judgment had been impaired by intoxicating substances,” relied upon by the district court. The evidence of marijuana traces found in Cooper’s car does not establish either that Cooper used marijuana while performing work for Misco or that his judgment during work was impaired by intoxicating substances. The arbitrator found, moreover, that Cooper neither used nor possessed, nor was under the influence of, marijuana at work. And the traces found in Cooper's car, even if considered by the arbitrator, would not, without more, lead to a contrary result, any more than an empty beer can in an employer’s ear would prove that he had been drinking on the work premises rather than elsewhere.
*746Amalgamated Meat Cutters, supra, is thus clearly distinguishable. The discharged employee there was actually consuming liquor while performing his job as a truck driver. Reinstatement would therefore have violated the public policy against drinking while driving. In this case, however, even though possession of marijuana violates a public policy, see La.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 40:966(D), we cannot say that reinstatement of an employee in whose car were found non-employment-related traces of marijuana would violate any “well defined and dominant” public policy against using or being under the influence of marijuana while at work.

Conclusion

For the reasons assigned, therefore, I respectfully dissent. In violation of settled principles limiting judicial intervention in employment-dispute resolution through arbitration, the majority errs in refusing to accept the facts of non-violation found by the arbitrator, simply because it disagrees with the arbitrator’s reasoning, and in refusing to enforce the arbitral award based upon purely rhetorical reasons of public policy beyond the facts actually found in the arbitration record.