Court Opinion

ID: 9480807
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:59:01.039867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:55.222795
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Review of arbitration decisions is one of the more difficult and standardless enterprises facing an appellate judge. The basic statements of the rules for such review seem quite definitive:
It is the arbitrator’s construction which was bargained for; and so far as the arbitrator’s decision concerns construction of the contract, the courts have no business overruling him because their interpretation of the contract is different from his.
United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car. Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 599, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 1362, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960) (emphasis added).
[A]s long as the arbitrator is even arguably construing or applying the con*1171tract and acting within the scope of his authority, that a court is convinced [the arbitrator] committed serious error does not suffice to overturn his decision.
United Paperworkers Int’l Union v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29, 38, 108 S.Ct. 364, 371, 98 L.Ed.2d 286 (1987) (emphasis added).
The arbitrator may not ignore the plain language of the contract; but the parties having authorized the arbitrator to give meaning to the language of the agreement, a court should not reject an award on the ground that the arbitrator misread the contract. Enterprise Wheel, supra, 363 U.S. at 599, 80 S.Ct. at 1362.
Ibid, (emphasis added).
Nevertheless, the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 185(a), does provide an avenue for review of labor arbitration decisions in federal court. That review is not an inevitable concomitant of the process of arbitration, and if that right is to be taken seriously, there must be some content to it, some line beyond which an arbitration decision will not be upheld.
Prior to Misco, the rule seemed to be “the arbitrator is always right.” After Misco, the rule would seem to be “even when the arbitrator is wrong, he’s still right.” Since Misco, our circuit has only overturned one arbitration award by published decision. IBEW Local 429 v. Toshiba America, Inc., 879 F.2d 208 (6th Cir.1989). Other circuits have been only slightly more generous.1 The rationale in Toshiba was that the arbitrator’s decision flew directly in the face of an explicit prohibition on his entering a certain area. The court in this case states that in Toshiba there was “a total disregard of the plain language of the contract” (p. 1169, citing 879 F.2d at 211), while in our case the interpretation was not “in direct contradiction of unambiguous terms of the agreement.”
One does not have to be a complete devotee of the Critical Legal Studies school to believe that there are degrees of ambiguity and clarity in most language. See, e.g., D’Amato, Aspects of Deconstruction, 84 Nw.U.L.Rev. 250 (1989). It seems to me that if a reviewing judge is firmly of the opinion that the arbitrator’s result cannot “in some rational manner be derived from the agreement” putatively interpreted, then the results should be overturned, within the degree of latitude given to reviewing courts. Amoco Oil Co. v. Oil, Chem. & Atomic Workers Int’l Union, 548 F.2d 1288, 1294 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 905, 97 S.Ct. 1697, 52 L.Ed.2d 389 (1977). While this test also suffers from a considerable degree of ambiguity, to abdicate even further than this would be to make the supposed power of review a nullity, so long as the arbitrator has the wit to point to some language in the contract as supposedly supporting his decision.
A number of appellate courts, while overturning arbitrators’ decisions, have tried to clarify the Misco standard to some degree by language indicating that appellate courts should step in only when the arbitrators have gone completely outside any conceivable interpretation of the contract. The First Circuit in Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. Local 27, United Paperworkers Int’l Union said, in overturning an award, that the arbitrator “... cannot be said to be ‘even arguably construing or applying the contract....’” 864 F.2d 940, 945 (1st Cir.1988), quoting Misco, 484 U.S. at 38, 108 S.Ct. at 371. The Second Circuit in In re Marine Pollution, 857 F.2d 91, 94 (2d Cir.1988), said the arbitrator would have been upheld if he explained his reasoning “in terms that offer even a barely colorable justification for the outcome reached,” but it quoted with approval the Seventh Circuit in Ethyl Corp. v. United Steelworkers, 768 *1172F.2d 180, 187 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1010, 106 S.Ct. 1184, 89 L.Ed.2d 300 (1986), stating that there was a limit to the deference afforded an arbitrator’s decision, and the arbitrator could not simply be “making the right noises.”
In Toshiba, this circuit reversed an arbitrator’s decision because his action amounted to “a total disregard of the plain language of the contract.” 879 F.2d at 21. In addition, our circuit, in an unpublished decision, rested its ruling that an arbitrator’s award did not draw its essence from the collective bargaining agreement on the fact that “[tjhere is no rational basis for this finding by the arbitrator.” United Textile Workers of America v. BASF Corp., 900 F.2d 261 (6th Cir.1990). The Eighth Circuit in George A. Hormel & Co. v. United Food & Commercial Workers, 879 F.2d 347, 350 (8th Cir.1989), stated that “... this court has vacated awards where the award’s result is one so contrary to common experience and logic that it is more likely than not that such result was not the intent of the parties.... ”
The language of the contract in our case states that all employees “shall receive a longevity increase,” implying a single increase. The contract goes on to state that employees of more than three years’ standing “shall receive said longevity increase on the first anniversary date of their employment following the effective date of this contract.” (Emphasis added). It Seems difficult to believe that even a convocation of grammarians and law professors could make it any clearer that only one increase was contemplated at some point during the contract period.
The next statement, covering employees with less than three years of service, provides slightly more latitude (obtained primarily through poor diction and grammar) and, were it standing alone, would probably justify the arbitrator’s ruling. That sentence fragment (it is not a grammatical sentence) reads, with regard to such employees:
[Ejmployees who have been employed by the Company for less than three years as of the effective date of this contract, longevity increases shall be payable on the anniversary date of their employment when they have been employed by the Company for three years.
(Emphasis added).
For this string of words, artful interpretation could argue that increases implies more than one and that “the anniversary date of their employment when they have been employed by the Company for three years” could refer to more than one date, specifically the third, fourth, fifth, etc. anniversary of the employment date. It would make no sense at all to award an employee with 2lh years of service at the signing of the contract longevity increases on the third, fourth, and fifth anniversaries, while the employee with 3V2 years would receive it on his fourth anniversary and no more. However, such a ruling would at least have some faint, though strained, relationship to the words of the contract.
In our case, that is not what the arbitrator did. Since I am completely unable to see how either I or any rational reader could interpret “first anniversary date” as meaning first, second and third anniversary dates, I would hold that the arbitrator did “ignore the plain language of the contract,” and was not “even arguably construing or applying the contract.” Even under Misco, that is enough to reverse an arbitrator’s decision. Since the court fails to do so, I must respectfully dissent.

. Through July 1, 1990, other federal circuit courts citing Misco have overturned arbitration awards in only six cases where the district court has not done so. Challenger Caribbean Corp. v. Union General de Trabajadores, 903 F.2d 857 (1st Cir.1990); Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. Local 27, United Paperworkers Int'l Union, 864 F.2d 940 (1st Cir.1988); S.D. Warren Co. v. United Paper-workers’ Int’l Union, 845 F.2d 3 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 992, 109 S.Ct. 555, 102 L.Ed.2d 582 (1988); In re Marine Pollution Service, Inc., 857 F.2d 91 (2d Cir.1988); George A. Hormel & Co. v. United Food & Commercial Workers, 879 F.2d 347 (8th Cir.1989); Inter-City Gas Corp. v. Boise Cascade Corp., 845 F.2d 184 (8th Cir.1988).