Court Opinion

ID: 9484235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:45:06.128536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:06.466200
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I readily concur in the judgment and in essentially the whole of Judge Williams’ opinion for the court. I write separately only to express one reservation — not about anything said in the opinion, but about the necessity to say anything at all about the possibility that Jackson’s state-law tort claim against her fellow-employee, Kimel, might be preempted by § 301. If it were appropriate to inquire whether that claim was preempted, I would fully agree with the majority opinion’s excellent analysis that under our McCormick test it was not. But I don’t believe § 301 preemption was possible as to that claim and, in consequence, believe that analysis was properly concluded as to it with the determination that it was not subject to dismissal as a non-colorable state-law claim under our Childers rule. See Childers v. Chesapeake & Potomac Tel. Co., 881 F.2d 1259, 1262 (4th Cir.1989).
So far as I know, neither the Supreme Court nor we ever have held that a union employee’s state-law tort claim against a fellow-employee that is removed pendent to a joined tort claim against the employer is subject, like the claim against the employer, to being “recharacterized” by preemption as a § 301 claim and so made subject to federal defenses unique to such a claim.1 Childers, which did involve several such removed pendent claims, may be thought to have implied that had those claims been found “colorable” ones under state law they would then have been subject (along with that against the employer) to § 301 preemption, but that possibility was never directly addressed because all the claims pleaded were dismissed as not “colorable.” See id. at 1263-67.
Certainly such claims should not be subject to § 301 preemption. When union employees have sought directly to sue fellow employees in § 301 actions, the claims rightly have been dismissed on the obvious basis that as non-signatories to the employer’s collective bargaining agreement, such employees are not amenable to claims for that contract’s breach. See cases cited in majority opinion, footnote 4. It would be anomalous indeed (and not one of those anomalies sometimes forced by policy considerations upon the law) if such a fellow-employee could nevertheless be considered a proper party defendant to a state-law tort claim “recharac-terized” by preemption as a § 301 breach of contract action. An almost scandalous consequence would be that by that means a fellow-employee defendant to a meritorious state-law tort action would be enabled, following removal of the pendent claim against him, to defeat it by invoking § 301 defenses (failure to exhaust grievance procedures, short limitations period) that are only available to one who properly can be charged as a signatory with breaching a labor contract.
This court’s recent decision in International Union, United Mine Workers v. Covenant Coal Corp. et al., 977 F.2d 895 (4th Cir.1992), which did hold that a pendent state-law claim against a non-signatory to a labor contract is subject to § 301 preemption is — must be— distinguishable. In that case, a union sued a coal company in federal court alleging parallel claims under § 301 and state tort law for tortious interference by the company with the union’s collective bargaining agreement with other coal companies. The court first affirmed dismissal of the federal § 301 claim on the basis that as a nonsignatory to the *1329union’s labor contract, the defendant company was not amenable to suit under § 301. Id. at 899. Turning to the pendent state law claim, the court affirmed the district court’s holding that it was preempted by § 301. The court reasoned that in order to decide the claim of tortious interference with the labor contract, it would have to be interpreted, thereby meeting our McCormick test of preemption. Id. Acknowledging the “apparent paradox” of holding on the one hand that a non-signatory was not amenable to a direct suit under § 301, but might nevertheless successfully assert preemption of a pendent state-law claim by virtue of that same provision, the court found solace in the fact that the union was not without other recourse under the special circumstances of the case. It might sue its contracting companies for breach, and in fact had already successfully pressed an unfair labor charge against them. Id. at 899, 900.
With all respect, I would read Covenant Coal’s preemption holding2 as narrowly confined to its circumstances that: it involved a federal action in which the primary claim directly invoked § 301 (the claimant in effect “asked for it”), rather than a removed state court action, and it involved a defendant against whom other avenues of relief were available. On this basis, I think it should have no application to the circumstances of this case in which the claimant had not invoked either a federal forum or a federal right, and in which preemption of her state claim would have left her without remedy.
Happily, in this case that ultimate mischief was avoided by the court’s proper holding (assuming preemption analysis was required) that the claim against Kimel was not preempted. But that may not happen the next time around, which is my reason for arguing here that the claim against Kimel as a fellow-employee, non-signatory to any collective bargaining agreement, was not subject to preemption.

. None of the Supreme Court decisions establishing the contours of § 301 preemption of state law tort claims involved either original or removed claims against employees in their individual capacities. All are concerned only with the preemption of claims against employers or unions, obviously signatories to the labor contracts at issue. See Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985) (employer-defendant); Int’l Bhd. of Elec. Workers v. Hechler, 481 U.S. 851, 107 S.Ct. 2161, 95 L.Ed.2d 791 (1987) (union-defendant); Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988) (employer-defendant); United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC v. Rawson, 495 U.S. 362, 110 S.Ct. 1904, 109 L.Ed.2d 362 (1990) (union-defendant).

. A holding whose authority, so far as it extends, I must of course acknowledge, but whose correctness, X have to confess, gives me great doubt.