Court Opinion

ID: 9430517
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:54.153439+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:12.937829
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Justice Powell, Justice Stevens, and Justice O’Connor join,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
The Court holds that appellant Union’s federal pre-emption claim must be considered on the merits by Alabama courts even though the Union never once raised the claim in the Alabama trial court until a post-trial motion following an adverse jury verdict. By allowing a defendant to save its preemption claim until after it sees the verdict, this ruling poses a sufficient threat to orderly judicial proceedings that it can be justified only if Congress has mandated such a result. Because Congress clearly has not mandated any such result, I disagree with Part II of the Court’s opinion.
Appellee Davis sued the Union in the Circuit Court of Mobile County alleging fraud and misrepresentation. Davis had been first a trainee ship superintendent and then a ship superintendent in the employ of Ryan-Walsh Stevedoring Co. in Mobile. Although the ship superintendents were theoretically superior to the longshoremen, they were paid *400less salary and their compensation was generally lower than that of the longshoremen, who worked for hourly wages.
One of Davis’ fellow ship superintendents contacted the Union to see about the possibility of organizing the superintendents and affiliating with the Union. At a meeting of the superintendents to discuss that possibility, several of them expressed a fear of being discharged for participating in union-related activities. Testimony at trial indicated that one Benny Holland, a union representative, had assured the superintendents that the Union would get them their jobs back with backpay if they were discharged. As a result of the meeting, a number of the ship superintendents including Davis signed pledge cards and an application for a union charter from the ILA.
Sure enough, first another superintendent and then Davis were discharged by Ryan-Walsh, and the Union did not succeed in getting them their jobs back, with or without backpay. Davis then filed this suit, which the Union defended on the merits throughout the trial; at the conclusion of the trial the jury returned a verdict in Davis’ favor for $75,000. Only at this point, in a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, did the Union first raise its pre-emption claim, a technique that the Court now sanctions.
The Supreme Court of Alabama refused to consider the claim, observing that Alabama Circuit Courts are courts of general jurisdiction having authority to try, inter alia, cases involving fraud and misrepresentation. That court held that the Union’s pre-emption claim was an affirmative defense under the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure, and had to be affirmatively pleaded in order to be considered. I agree with this Court that Congress could, if it wished, forbid Alabama to impose any such procedural rule, but I am convinced that Congress has done no such thing.
The Court relies on what it apparently considers to be the similar case of Kalb v. Feuerstein, 308 U. S. 433 (1940). There Congress did provide quite explicitly that state courts *401should be deprived of jurisdiction in cases where mortgage foreclosure proceedings in those courts were also the subject of a petition in bankruptcy in federal court. Congress said:
“ ‘(o) Except upon petition made to and granted by the judge after hearing and report by the conciliation commissioner, the following proceedings shall not be instituted, or if instituted at any time prior to the filing of a petition under this section, shall not be maintained, in any court or otherwise, against the farmer or his property, at any time after the filing of the petition under this section, and prior to the confirmation or other disposition of the composition or extension proposal by the court:
“ ‘(2) proceedings for foreclosure of a mortgage on land ... or for recovery of possession of land.’” Id., at 440-441 (quoting Frazier-Lemke Act) (emphasis deleted).
In the present case, by contrast, Congress has never said a word about pre-emption of state-court jurisdiction. This Court, in a long line of cases beginning with Garner v. Teamsters, 346 U. S. 485 (1953), has enunciated a judicial doctrine of pre-emption in labor relations cases based on the implied intent of Congress. But as the Court noted in Garner:
“The national Labor Management Relations Act, as we have before pointed out, leaves much to the states, though Congress has refrained from telling us how much. We must spell out from conflicting indications of congressional will the area in which state action is still permissible.” Id., at 488 (footnote omitted).
Thus when the Court speaks of the pre-emption of “subject-matter jurisdiction” here, it must rely on a far more dimly refracted version of congressional intent than did the Kalb Court: not what Congress said, but what this Court thinks Congress might have said had it been confronted with *402the situation. This is far too thin a reed to support the perverse application of the doctrine in the present case.
The Court also places undue reliance upon its opinion in Construction Laborers v. Curry, 371 U. S. 542 (1963). There the claim of federal pre-emption had been properly-presented by the union at every stage of Georgia proceedings. This Court, on direct review of a judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia, held that Congress had denied to the Georgia courts the authority to issue an injunction because the matter, was “within the exclusive powers of the National Labor Relations Board.” Id., at 546-547. The Court’s opinion in Curry refers to state-court “jurisdiction,” but as Justice Frankfurter explained, “the term ‘jurisdiction’ ... is a verbal coat of . . . many colors.” United States v. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U. S. 33, 39 (1952) (dissenting opinion). The Court’s opinion today implicitly suggests that the word “jurisdiction” is to lawyers what a term like Bombycilla cedrorum (cedar waxwing) is to ornithologists: a description of one and only one particular species recognized throughout the world. We all know that the term “jurisdiction” does not partake of that specialized a meaning.
Nothing in Curry, and certainly nothing in Kalb, foreordains the result in this case. State-court judges and trial courts of general jurisdiction in Alabama and in the other 49 States are experts primarily in state law, not federal law. Indeed, with the advancing march of federal legislation in areas heretofore left to state law, it would be an impossible task for any judge — federal or state — to keep abreast of the various areas in which there might be federal pre-emption. Here Alabama, by application of a neutral statute with a precise counterpart in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, has said that a defendant who wishes to claim federal preemption as a defense to state-court exercise of jurisdiction may not wait to raise that claim until after the case has gone to verdict. The Court, saying otherwise, allows a sophisticated defendant as in the present case to gamble on obtaining *403a favorable verdict and raise a pre-emption defense only if it loses on the merits. To me this result defies common sense; if Congress had ordained it, I would reach it albeit with reluctance. But it is this Court, not Congress, that has ordained the result. I believe the Court is mistaken in doing so, and I therefore cannot join Part II of its opinion.
Having concluded that National Labor Relations Act preemption is “jurisdictional,” and hence may be raised at any time, the Court goes on to decide that the Union has not carried its burden of showing that the conduct at issue here was “arguably” protected or prohibited by the Act. With this I agree. Accordingly, I join Parts I and III of the Court’s opinion and concur in the judgment.