Court Opinion

ID: 9466794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:27:58.432565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:57.748780
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
This suit for breach of the duty of fair representation highlights the problem of too many tribunals reviewing administrative disputes. Since we cannot alter the number of tribunals involved, our most important task is to assure discipline in adherence to allotted review functions. It is difficult enough for us to divine from the cases how to supervise the allocation of fact-finding functions between administrative law judges and administrative tribunals without our becoming a third level of fact finders. It is not, therefore, the analysis of the union constitution and bylaws with which I disagree, but rather the proper procedural disposition of this case.
In this case union leadership interpreted the union constitution and bylaws against a union member’s claim of substitute priority. He then made repeated attempts to have the decision reviewed according to prescribed procedures. The administrative law judge who saw the witnesses concluded that the officers’ post-interpretative conduct in frustrating the member’s attempts for review was in bad faith, but their interpretation was so patently correct that no bad faith in making the interpretation could be imputed. When the Board reviewed the record, it held a precisely contrary view of the proper interpretation of the constitution and bylaws. Its opinion does not make abundantly clear whether its finding of bad faith was based exclusively on what it believed to be an impermissible interpretation of the constitution and bylaws or whether it took some comfort from the administrative law judge’s factual conclusion that the member’s complaint was processed in a bad-faith manner.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the constitution and bylaws are “simply silent” on the issue involved and that union officials could, in perfectly good faith, interpret them as they did. The interpretative decision standing by itself could not support a finding of bad faith.
What is left is the factual question of whether the officers’ post-interpretative conduct (found by the administrative law judge to have been in bad faith) is sufficient to imply that, in opting for one of two permissible interpretations, the officers acted in bad faith toward this union member. Since both of the tribunals properly charged with fact finding found the constitution and bylaws clear on substitute priority, we simply do not know what factual conclusion they would have reached if they had viewed the constitution and bylaws as either ambiguous or silent. If we were at liberty to guess, the express finding of bad faith by the administrative law judge, followed by the Board’s conclusion that bad faith existed, suggests the opposite result from that reached by the majority. Neither the majority nor I am able to say as a matter of *139law that the post-interpretative conduct is either irrelevant to or unavoidably requires a finding of bad faith.
Since neither interpretation of the constitution and bylaws is clearly mandated, external evidence of bad faith in the processing of the dispute may, but does not necessarily, imply bad faith by the officers in interpreting the critical provisions of the governing rules. This sensitive factual judgment is quite properly left to the Board with the assistance of an administrative law judge. The proper procedure would be to return this case to the fact finders for a resolution of this question.