Court Opinion

ID: 8869665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 18:20:59.027432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:07.866430
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
(concurring).
I concur in the result reached by the majority opinion. The parol evidence rule is correctly stated and applied, and the case is decided upon a valid ground.
I would prefer, however, that the decision be based on national labor policy, rather than the parol evidence rule. As a matter of substantive labor law, we should not permit a written collective bargaining contract to be varied by evidence of a contradictory oral agreement. Gatliff Coal Co. v. Cox, 152 F.2d 52 (C.A. 6). I prefer the dissenting opinion of Chief Judge Sobeloff over the majority opinion in Lewis v. Lowry, 295 F.2d 197 (C.A.4), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 977, 82 S. Ct. 478, 7 L.Ed.2d 438.
The Supreme Court has placed collective bargaining contracts in a special class. In Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 456, 77 S.Ct. 912, 918, 1 L.Ed.2d 972, the Court stated: “We conclude that the substantive law to apply in suits under § 301(a) is federal law, which the courts must fashion from the policy of our national labor laws.” In United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior and Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U.S. 574, 578, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 1351, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409, the Court said: “The collective bargaining agreement states the rights and duties of the parties. It is more than a contract; it is a generalized code to govern a myriad of cases * * *.” Mr. Justice Brennan in his concurring opinion in United Steelworkers of America v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U.S. 564, 570, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 1364, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403, characterized a collective bargaining agreement to be “ * * * the charter instrument of a system of industrial self-government * * In each of these cases it was stated that national labor policy must be a consideration in interpreting labor agreements.
The purpose of written labor agreements is to settle questions which, if left unsettled, would lead to industrial strife. Variation of such written contracts by evidence of prior or contemporaneous oral agreements is contrary to national labor policy. In my opinion national labor policy requires that evidence of oral agreements be inadmissible to vary the provisions of written labor contracts.