Court Opinion

ID: 9781538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:50:53.155205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:27.763169
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
with whom EASTAUGH, Justice, joins, dissenting.
I disagree with today’s opinion insofar as it holds that Hammond may litigate twice the question whether the accusations that he made against his employer were in good faith, that is, with a reasonable basis for believing them to be true.
One of the grounds the state relied on for firing Hammond was that he made unfounded attacks on the integrity and competence of DOTPF staff that undermined the department’s ability to carry out its mission. To succeed in his challenge to his firing, Hammond had to establish that he acted in good faith with a reasonable belief that his accusations were true. This question was litigated in the seven-day arbitration proceeding and it was resolved against him. The same question is critical to his claim under the Whistle-blower Act because the act does not protect those whose reports are not made in good faith.1 Unless the arbitration proceedings were unfair in some fundamental way, I believe that Hammond should be precluded from relitigating the same question in his claim under the Whistleblower Act.
The norm in our legal system is that a litigant is entitled to litigate a question only once. The doctrines of res judicata (claim preclusion) and collateral estoppel (issue preclusion) are “founded upon the principle that parties ought not to be permitted to litigate the same issue more than once and that when a right or fact has been judicially determined by a court of competent jurisdiction or an opportunity for such trial has been given, the judgment of the court, so long as it remains unreversed, should be conclusive upon the parties....”2 A valid arbitration award generally has the same preclusive effect as a court judgment.3 Today’s opinion declines to apply this rule on the ground that doing so would unacceptably diminish Hammond’s right to sue under the Whistleblower Act. I disagree because I see no indication in the Whistleblower Act that the legislature intended to deviate from the established norm that a litigant gets only one bite at the apple.4
It is important to note that the procedures under which Hammond litigated the question whether his firing was justified are mandated by statute. Hammond was a state employee whose employment was governed by a collective bargaining agreement regulated by the Public Employment Relations Act, AS 23.40.070 et seq. Under PERA, collective bargaining agreements must include a grievance procedure “which shall have binding arbitration as its final step.”5 Allowing an employee to relitigate against an employer questions that have already been determined in binding arbitration destroys the finality of the PERA-mandated arbitration remedy. Further, doing so permits inconsistent results, and is costly and inefficient.
*883Some of the differences between my views and those of today’s opinion are reflected in the two opinions in Barnica v. Kenai Peninsula Borough School District,6 a ease decided by an evenly divided court.7 The dispositional opinion, which I wrote and in which Justice Eastaugh joined, held that “a claim subject to an agreement to arbitrate for which an independent statutory judicial remedy is also available must be arbitrated, unless the history and structure of the statute in question indicate that the legislature intended to preclude waiver of the judicial remedy in favor of the arbitral forum.”8 Justice Bryner, in an opinion joined by Justice Carpeneti, dissented, taking the view that a statutory right to a judicial forum can only be waived by a provision in a collective bargaining contract that contains a “clear and unmistakable waiver.” 9
In Bamica the collective bargaining agreement explicitly barred discrimination on the basis of sex.10 But Barnica proceeded directly to court on his sex discrimination claim without using the grievance and arbitration procedures of the collective bargaining agreement.11 The dispositional opinion held that he was barred from pursuing his judicial remedy because he failed to exhaust his remedies under the collective bargaining agreement.12 The present case differs in two respects. Protection of whistleblowers is not explicitly built into the collective bargaining contract, and Hammond, unlike Barnica, did exhaust his contract remedies. These differences are potentially important. One might say that Hammond had no duty to grieve and arbitrate his dismissal as a precondition to suit on his whistleblower claim, reasoning along the lines of the dissent in Bamica that the collective bargaining agreement must contain a clear and unmistakable waiver of the right to a judicial forum on a statutory claim.13 That position would nonetheless be consistent with the view that when the right to arbitration is actually exercised and an issue common to the claim being arbitrated and the statutory claim is determined, the issue cannot be relitigated because of established legal norms precluding litigation of an issue more than once. For this reason this case presents a stronger claim for preclusion than Bamica.
But most of the reasons given in the dispo-sitional opinion in Bamica also apply to this case. Briefly summarized, they are as follows. The legislature mandated binding arbitration in PERA; that procedure is in no sense a second-class remedy subordinate to the judicial remedy provided under the act in question.14 Further, we recognized that the “common law and statutes of Alaska evince ‘a strong public policy in favor of arbitration’ ”15 and that arbitration compared to litigation is a “relatively inexpensive and expeditious method of dispute resolution.”16 The dispositional opinion rejected the Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co.17 line of cases in favor of the more recent Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp.18 approach and declined to find that “the distinction between collective bargaining contracts [as in Gardner-Denver] and individual contracts [as in Gilmer] is necessarily meaningful with respect to the treatment of arbitration claus*884es.”19 Finally, the dispositional opinion noted that “an employee’s state constitutional right to a pretermination hearing could be waived in a collective bargaining agreement so long as the remedy substituted by the collective bargaining agreement was ‘fair, reasonable and efficacious.’ ”20 “[I]f constitutionally mandated remedies may be waived by alternative grievance/arbitration procedures, statutory remedies likewise may be subject -to waiver because of such procedures.” 21
As I have suggested, the legislature has the right and power to provide that facts essential to whistleblower claims cannot be resolved in PERA-mandated arbitration. But there is no indication in the text or history of the act that this was intended, nor is there an inherent conflict between arbitration and the purposes of the Whistleblower Act. Thus there is no reason not to adhere to the norm that a party is entitled to litigate an issue only once.
One of Hammond’s defenses to the state’s motion for summary judgment was that the arbitration proceedings were fundamentally unfair because of discovery deficiencies, because he was poorly represented, and because he was denied the opportunity to be represented by his own attorney or to represent himself. Arbitration awards should not be given preclusive effect if they lack the essential elements of fair adjudication.22 The superior court did not address this issue in its decision granting summary judgment. I would remand this case for that purpose. If the issue were resolved in Hammond’s favor, his suit could proceed. If it were resolved in favor of the state, the question of the good faith of Hammond’s accusations could not be litigated a second time.

. AS 39.90.110(a)(2) provides: "A person is not entitled to the protections under AS 39.90.100-39.90.150 unless the person ... (2) reports the information in good faith."

. State v. Baker, 393 P.2d 893, 897 (Alaska 1964).

. See Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 84(1).

. See Bignelt v. Wise, 720 P.2d 490, 494 (Alaska 1986) (“The same considerations of efficiency and fairness that limit civil plaintiffs to 'one bite of the apple’ apply equally to workers’ compensation proceedings.”).

. AS 23.40.210(a).

. 46 P.3d 974 (Alaska 2002).

. A decision by an evenly divided court results in an affirmance. The opinion agreeing with the result reached by the superior court is referred to as the dispositional opinion, but it does not have the precedential effect of an opinion of the court. Anderson v. State ex rel. Central Bering Sea Fishermen’s Ass'n, 78 P.3d 710, 713 (Alaska 2003).

. Barnica, 46 P.3d at 977.

. Id. at 983.

. Id. at 975.

. Id.

. Id. at 977.

.Id. at 983.

. Id. at 977-78.

. Id. at 978 (citing Dep’t of Pub. Safety v. Pub. Safety Employees Ass'n, 732 P.2d 1090, 1093 (Alaska 1987) (quoting University of Alaska v. Modern Constr., Inc., 522 P.2d 1132, 1138 (Alaska 1974))).

. Id. at 978.

. 415 U.S. 36, 94 S.Ct. 1011, 39 L.Ed.2d 147 (1974).

. 500 U.S. 20, 111 S.Ct. 1647, 114 L.Ed.2d 26 (1991).

. Barnica, 46 P.3d at 980. We noted that individual contracts are often contracts of adhesion offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, while collective bargaining contracts are usually the product of bilateral negotiations and are therefore at least as fair to employees as standard individual employment contracts. A recent journal article makes the same point more strongly:
Individual employees' lack of bargaining power when compared to that of union members draws into question the relevance of the Gilmer Court’s distinction between union and nonunion arbitration agreements. The arbitration provision at issue in Gardner-Denver was negotiated by the employer and the union selected by a majority of the plaintiff's coworkers. The union, like the employer, was likely a repeat player "with an equivalent insight into arbitration and the operations of the workplace,” and with the experience and knowledge necessary to draft a fair arbitration agreement. By comparison, the individual employee in Gilmer had to sign a contract in which he had little, if any, input. If the Court were to enforce the arbitration clause in either of the two cases, it should have enforced the one in Gardner-Denver.
Erica F. Schohn, The Uncertain Future of Mandatory Arbitration of Statutory Claims in the Unionized Workplace, 67 Law & Contemp. Probs. 321, 327 (Winter/Spring 2004) (footnotes omitted).

. Id. at 981 (quoting Storrs v. Municipality of Anchorage, 721 P.2d 1146, 1150 (Alaska 1986)).

. Id.

. See Restatement (Second) of Judgments §§ 84(3)(b); 83(2)(a-e).