Court Opinion

ID: 9493825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:20:33.81906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:03.322334
License: Public Domain

BEAM, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
According to the probably whimsical comment of publisher Clare Boothe Luce, “no good deed goes unpunished.” The court’s opinion seems to prove the point, at least when an employer is unlucky enough to come under the jurisdiction of the Na*977tional Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as it is presently constituted and staffed.1 Believing that this should not be true, I respectfully dissent.
I adopt the court’s statement of the issues and its statement of the facts and procedural background. I write additionally only to emphasize that Systemaire and fellow contractors, caught in a squeeze resulting from continuous bickering over jurisdictional matters between Sheet Metal Local 36 (Local 36) and Pipefitters Local 562 (Pipefitters), made every effort to equitably resolve the numerous quarrels over work to be done. Systemaire helped create and agreed to abide by the decisions of a local joint jurisdictional committee. Both unions were represented on this committee.
Local 36, after losing one argument, refused to participate further. Systemaire then took the problem directly to the NLRB who refused, unreasonably in my view, to issue an “area-wide” ruling to solve the difficulty. This resulted in the wasteful and obviously frustrating need for Systematize and other affected contractors to march back and forth to the NLRB with each similar dispute. Then, when Local 36 instigated a grievance before another local tribunal, stacked in its favor because the Pipefitters were not represented on this particular local board, the NLRB, standing on procedural technicalities and murky legal reasoning, refused to hear Syste-maire’s complaint and set aside the $10,000 assessment against the beleaguered employer imposed by the unrepresentative LJAB. The district court placed its stamp of approval on this result. The court now validates this unfortunate mistake.
Even applying the arcane procedural and substantive requirements of the NLRB, Systemaire should still prevail.
In granting summary judgment in favor of Local 36, the .district court concluded that Systemaire’s defenses were barred because the company did not raise them in a timely action to vacate the award. We review the district court’s summary judgment determinations de novo. Amir v. St. Louis Univ., 184 F.3d 1017, 1024 (8th Cir.1999).
I agree that a party seeking to challenge the validity of an arbitration award generally must file a timely motion to vacate that award. Domino Group, Inc. v. Charlie Parker Mem’l Found., 985 F.2d 417, 419-20 (8th Cir.1993). The failure to file a timely motion to vacate an award also typically bars a party from later raising any defenses to the confirmation of the award that could have been raised in the vacation motion. Id. at 419. Although section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA) contains no statute of limitations regarding the filing of a vacation motion, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a), we have held that a “district court must borrow a statute of limitations from state law most analogous to the dispute.” Local 2, Int’l Bhd. of Elec. Workers v. Anderson Underground Constr., Inc., 907 F.2d 74, 75 (8th Cir.1990). In this case, the most analogous state law is the Missouri Uniform Arbitration Act, which mandates that a motion to vacate an arbitration award be filed within ninety days after delivery of a copy of the award to the moving party. Mo.Rev.Stat. § 435.405(2).
It is undisputed that Systemaire received a copy of the LJAB’s decision and did not file a motion to vacate the arbitra*978tion award within ninety days thereafter. In fact, it has never filed an action to vacate the award. Because of this, I also agree that we must consider whether such a failure precludes the district court from considering Systemaire’s defense that the arbitration award did not draw its essence from the collective bargaining agreement.
Local 36 contends that this case is controlled by our prior decision in Local Union No. 36, Sheet Metal Workers’ Int’l Ass’n v. Atlas Air Conditioning Co., 926 F.2d 770 (8th Cir.1991). In Atlas Air, our court held that when an employer is faced, with an unresolved grievance over which a grievance arbitration board has assumed jurisdiction, with which assumption of jurisdiction the employer disagrees, upon notice, the employer has three alternatives. Id. at 771. The employer can seek declaratory or injunctive relief from a court of competent jurisdiction prior to the commencement of the arbitration itself, asserting the lack of grievability of the issue presented. Id. at 772. Systematize did not do so in this case. The employer can notify the arbitration board that it refuses to arbitrate altogether (and contest the grievability of the issue when the other party brings an action to compel arbitration). Id. Systemaire did not do so in this case. Finally, the employer can object to the arbitration board’s authority, refuse to argue the grievability issue before the Board, and proceed to the merits of the grievance. Id. at 771. “By making an objection as to jurisdiction and an express reservation of the question on the record [the employer will] not [lose] its defense.” Id. at 771-72.
Systemaire’s two letters to the LJAB, while not drawn with scalpel-like precision, did firmly assert that the work allocation issue was not grievable. In its first letter, dated September 16, 1996, Systemaire said, “Please be advised that we do not feel the issues here are grievable; rather they are jurisdictional disputes between Sheet Metal Workers Local 36 and Pipefitters Local 562.” (Appellant’s App. at 116.) Systemaire also indicated that it was prepared to take the jurisdictional issue to the NLRB as it had done in previous cases where the NLRB had ruled against the Sheet Metal Workers. In the second letter, Systemaire told the LJAB that the grievance was the result of a jurisdictional dispute between Local 36 and the Pipefit-ters and “[a]s such, we do not feel that these issues are relevant to hearings by the [LJAB], Instead, we will once again address these grievances through the National Labor Relations Board.” (Appellant’s App. at 117.) The second letter goes on, however, to argue the merits of the Sunline project grievance and closes with a request that the Board’s ruling be in Sys-temaire’s favor. The question for us to answer is whether Systemaire’s letters constitute an objection to the Board’s jurisdiction, and a sufficient “reservation of the question on the record,” so that it did not lose its now asserted defense of nong-rievability when it failed to file a motion to vacate the award.
I conclude that Systemaire sufficiently reserved the issue of the grievability of the dispute between it and Local 36 over the allocation of the work on the Sunline project such that Systemaire can assert it now as part of its defense that the award does not draw its essence from the CBA, even though it did not file a motion to vacate the award within the ninety-day period. Systemaire objected to the LJAB’s power to arbitrate what Systemaire considered to be a nongrievable issue, did not submit the grievability of the work allocation issue to the local board, and made clear that it believed the NLRB was the proper place to determine the dispute. Unlike the employer in Atlas Air, Systemaire has not waived or forfeited its defense.
Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the district court and remand this case for further proceedings not inconsistent with my views. I would decline the parties’ invitation to determine in this appeal whether or not the work assignment issue was grievable pursuant to the CBA *979between the parties. That question is best decided in the first instance by the district court.
Because Local 36 would no longer be the prevailing party, I would also vacate the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees.

. “It is the Board's function to strike a balance among 'conflicting legitimate interests’ which will 'effectuate national labor policy,' including those who support versus those who oppose the union.” NLRB v. Magnavox Co., 415 U.S. 322, 326, 94 S.Ct. 1099, 39 L.Ed.2d 358 (1974) (quoting NLRB v. Truck Drivers Union, 353 U.S. 87, 96, 77 S.Ct. 643, 1 L.Ed.2d 676 (1957)). "Congress made [the NLRB] an agency not as a labor board-created to aid labor in its struggle against the employer. As shown by its name, Congress created it to be a board concerned with the administration of ‘labor relations' in which the rights of the employer are to be as jealously guarded as those of the employee.” Leonard v. NLRB, 205 F.2d 355, 357 (9th Cir.1953) (emphasis supplied).