Court Opinion

ID: 9736476
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:57:55.015253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:06.892882
License: Public Domain

O’Sullivan, J.
(dissenting). The modern judicial attitude toward arbitration is that its use should be encouraged. International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. Shapiro, 138 Conn. 57, 68, 82 A.2d 345. But however sympathetic the law may be toward this method of terminating controversies, arbitration must be carried out, not in some haphazard fashion suiting the fancy of the parties or the arbitrators, but pursuant to recognized rules of long standing. The need for adherence to legal principles is particularly apparent in those cases where, as here, one of the parties is seeking to convert an award into a judgment.
My disagreement with the majority is limited to the phase of the award, covered by paragraph 1, which deals with a proposed reduction in pay. My dissent is based on three grounds.
*621First, the award was void since it went beyond the terms of the submission. Chase Brass & Copper Co. v. Chase Brass & Copper Workers Union, 139 Conn. 591, 594, 96 A.2d 209. It is, of course, true that when an arbitrator acts partly within and partly beyond the authority derived from the submission, only so much of the award is void as lacks authority to support it, provided the part which is void can be separated from the rest without injustice. 6 Williston, Contracts (Rev. Ed.) p. 5395; Sturges, Commercial Arbitrations & Awards, § 226; 3 Am. Jur. 957; 6 C.J.S. 234; see Dutton v. Gillet, 5 Conn. 172, 175 n. The award in the case at bar is so worded that it is legally impossible to separate the valid from the void. Thus, if so much of it is upheld as reduces the hourly rates by 9.75 cents, one is confronted by the fact that there is nothing in the award, as I shall later point out, which warrants the reduction in piece rates. The injustice, then, is that one half of the employees are reduced in pay by almost 10 cents an hour while the pay of the other half remains unaffected. Like the Gordian knot, the award is incapable of being untied so that the good may be isolated from the bad. Both are inextricably bound together, and they cannot be separated by the use of a legal meat ax.
Second, the award cannot be corrected, since the merits of the controversy would be affected. Pratt, Read & Co. v. United Furniture Workers, 136 Conn. 205, 208, 70 A.2d 120; General Statutes § 8162.
Third, the award, whether viewed in its original or in its corrected form, lacks finality and definitude. Certainty is an indispensable requirement of a legal award. If it is deficient in this respect, it cannot be upheld. It must leave no loophole for future dispute on the matter submitted. See 3 Am. Jur. *622947, § 125. “It is essential to the validity of an award that it be final, that is, a termination of the question under arbitration, . . . and be capable of being made the subject of a judgment or decree. Further, the award must be certain in the sense that no reasonable question can be made as to its meaning.” 6 Williston, op. eit., p. 5397.
The majority have ordered the court to render a judgment incorporating the following corrected paragraph of the award:
“1. Beginning with the first payroll period which commences after December 31,1952, all hourly rates shall be reduced by 9.75 cents. Piece rates and plant hiring minimum rates shall be adjusted accordingly.n
The majority do not direct the court to state in the judgment how the second sentence, which I have italicized for emphasis, is to be carried out, since there is nothing in the award to inform the reader what method the arbitrator had in mind. Indeed, the second sentence provides one of the unsolved mysteries of the case. Undoubtedly the arbitrator knew what he meant by the language he used but it is conceded that nobody else did.
For example, after receiving the award, the defendant, apparently not comprehending what the arbitrator had decided, conferred with the plaintiff and proposed that the award be determined to mean the following: “1. The hiring rate would be reduced from $1.00 per hour to $.94 per hour, the rate in effect prior to the March 26, 1951 increase. 2. The minimum rate would be reduced from $1.15 per hour to $1.10 per hour, the rate in effect prior to the March 26, 1951 increase. 3. Employees who are on minimum rate jobs, that is, who are receiving $1.15 per hour will be reduced 5(£ per hour. 4. Employees who were receiving the plant minimum of $1.10 prior to *623March 26,1951 were increased $0.0975 as of that date, therefore, they will be reduced by the same amount.
5. Hourly rate workers other than those mentioned above will be reduced by $0.0975 per hour and new hourly rates will be issued not later than January 8, 1953 for all employees on the hourly rate basis. 6. For pieceworkers, there will be $0.0975 per hour deducted from the piecework earnings of each employee until the Timestudy-Standards Division has time to issue new piece rates which, it is expected, will be completed in time to use on March 2, 1953. 7. Piecework base rates would revert to the same base rates as were in effect prior to the March 26, 1951 increase. . . .”
It further developed, as the finding shows, that when the defendant was unable to convince the plaintiff that the parties should agree to these seven propositions as determinative of what the award meant, the defendant suggested that the plaintiff go to the arbitrator to obtain his interpretation of the award. Needless to say, the suggestion was ignored.
The majority now direct the court to ripen this meaningless award into a judgment, without giving any clue as to how the piece rates and plant hiring minimum rates can be determined. It seems to me that in the light of the foregoing discussion the award, now to be altered into a judgment, cannot be characterized either as final, complete or definitive.
For the foregoing reasons, I cannot agree with the majority.
Memorandum on Reargument
Inglis, C. J.
Reargument in this case was granted but was limited to the first ground stated in the mo*624tion. That ground reads: “The court in construing the submission did not take into consideration the fact that employees receiving the plant ‘minimum rate’ were paid on a flat hourly basis and received an increase in March, 1951 of only five cents per hour; that those employees receiving the ‘hiring rate’ were paid on a flat hourly basis and received an increase in March, 1951 of only six cents per hour and that, therefore, a reduction of 9.75 cents an hour in the hourly rates paid, which include those receiving the plant minimum rate and the hiring rate would not come to the same as a reversion to the wage structure as it was prior to March 26,1951. Thus the basic premise on which the court’s decision rests is erroneous.”
In the original opinion, we pointed out that the nub of the question submitted to the arbitrator was whether there should be a reduction of wages in the defendant’s plant which would offset the increase which had become effective on March 26, 1951. We concluded that the effect of the award as properly interpreted was to direct a reversion of the wage structure, as it affected all employees except engravers, to what it was prior to March 26, 1951. The award, as corrected, accomplished this by directing that all hourly rates be reduced by 9.75 cents and that piece rates and plant hiring minimum rates be “adjusted accordingly.”
The basic contention of the plaintiff in its motion to reargue is that, as interpreted by us, the award would result in a reduction of 9.75 cents an hour in the wages of the employees of the defendant who receive wages at the “plant minimum rate” or at the “hiring rate.” That is not the interpretation we gave to the award.
It is obvious that the arbitrator did not consider *625that the plant minimum rates or the hiring rates were “hourly rates” as he used that term in ordering a 9.75 cent reduction in them. Had he considered that plant minimum rates or hiring rates were “hourly rates,” it would not have been necessary or meaningful for him to have added to his order that hourly rates be reduced by 9.75 cents the direction that “plant hiring minimum rates” should be “adjusted accordingly.” If he had intended that plant minimum rates or hiring rates should be treated as hourly rates and therefore be reduced by the full 9.75 cents per hour, his added direction that plant hiring minimum rates should be “adjusted accordingly” would have been superfluous. As was stated in the opinion, the only reasonable interpretation of the award in so far as it pertains to plant minimum rates and hiring rates is that they be reduced proportionately to the ordered reduction in hourly rates. That is, that plant minimum rates and hiring rates should be reduced by the same proportion of 9.75 cents per hour as the increase of them in 1951 was of the then increase of 9.75 cents in the hourly rates. In other words, the award was that, to determine the amount of reduction to be made in plant minimum rates and hiring rates, the parties should apply to them in reverse the same formula whereby the parties had determined in 1951 that an increase of 9.75 cents in the hourly rates called for an increase of 5 and 6 cents per hour in the plant minimum and hiring rates respectively. It follows that the award of the arbitrator meant no more nor less than that the plant minimum wage rate was to be reduced by 5 cents per hour and the hiring rate by 6 cents per hour. The motion to reargue, therefore, is based on an erroneous conception of the interpretation given to the award in the original opinion of the court.
*626In oral argument, counsel for the plaintiff contended that the award is impossible of application to any reduction in the rates for piecework. Although this contention is outside of the grounds set up in the motion to reargue, we have given it careful consideration. In this matter also, as was stated in the original opinion, the award is to be interpreted as directing the parties to arrive at the reduction to be made in piece rates by using in reverse the formula used to determine in 1951 the increase in those rates which would be proportionate to an increase of 9.75 cents in the hourly rates. It is true that the exact method whereby piece rates are determined does not appear in the record. It is apparent, however, that one consideration which is a factor in that determination is the amount the average pieceworker ought to be able to earn per hour. It does appear in the record that, when the wages of the hourly workers were increased by 9.75 cents per hour in 1951, in order to reach an approximate uniformity with that increase for the pieceworkers their base rates were increased in a manner designed to produce an average increase of 8.1 cents an hour. If, in so far as the hourly wages which could be made by pieceworkers was a factor in establishing piece rates, an increase of 8.1 cents an hour was determined as being the equivalent of an increase of 9.75 cents per hour for the hourly workers, a reduction of 8.1 cents per hour in that factor will be the equivalent of a reduction of 9.75 cents per hour for hourly workers. It is an adjustment such as this that is directed in the award, which orders that piece rates be “adjusted accordingly.” It is, of course, true, as was further argued, that changes in the company’s products and in the productivity of the workers which have come about *627since 1951 will make the fixing of piece rates in accordance with the award complicated and difficult. However, the same complications and difficulties would have been met if there had been no general increase in wages in 1951. By ordering that piece rates shall be “adjusted accordingly,” i.e., proportionately to the reduction in the hourly rate, the award, in the nature of a declaratory judgment, establishes the principle that piece rates shall now be established by reverting to what they were before March 26, 1951, and, starting at that point, be re-figured on the basis of time studies just as they would have been during the period since 1951 if there had been no general increase of wages throughout the plant in that year.
We see no occasion to make any change either in the opinion or in the rescript.
In this opinion Wyíhse and Molloy, Js., concurred; O’Stjlltvaet and Daly, Js., dissented (Daly, J., having heard the reargument, now desires to be recorded as dissenting from the original opinion and joining in the dissenting opinion).