Court Opinion

ID: 9816474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 03:10:45.057941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:54.027156
License: Public Domain

BECKER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In my view, the dispute that the Arbitrator, the District Court, and the majority of this panel go to such lengths to resolve was never arbitrable in the first place. These tribunals are all agreed that the umpires resigned — a mass resignation of a significant portion of the bargaining unit. None of the umpires was terminated or discharged. As I see it, under these circumstances, there was no violation either of the basic agreement or of the first paragraph of Article VIII A that could trigger the arbitration clause. Moreover, even if one were to ignore the fact of the resignations, the matter would still not be arbitrable because as I read that clause, it confers upon the League Presidents the unfettered (“final and binding”) right to discharge an umpire with five or more years of service.13 The language could not be clearer, and the exercise of conflating the second paragraph of Article VIII A— which deals with retention on the basis of *290merit or skill, and the proscription against discrimination or recrimination — with the first paragraph of Article VIII A does not carry the day because the first paragraph deals with a wholly different situation — a mass resignation.
This result is not changed by the standard of review. As I read the record, Major League Baseball agreed to submit the question of arbitrability to the arbitrator while preserving its right to challenge his determination. While this converts our normal de novo standard of review (of the arbitrability decision) into a deferential one, see United Indus. Workers v. Gov’t of V.I., 987 F.2d 162, 167-68 (3d Cir.1993), that does not change the result because, in my opinion, the determination that the dispute was arbitrable was manifestly erroneous, and did not draw its essence from the agreement. I therefore respectfully dissent, and would vacate the judgment of the District Court and remand with directions to dismiss the complaint.

. Any argument based on the five year clause has dropped out of the case because the umpires with less than five years experience have settled.