Court Opinion

ID: 9478479
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:50:05.948773+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:26.927214
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
PER CURIAM.
The Enquirer has petitioned for rehearing on the ground, inter al., that our construction of Article XXI of the collective bargaining agreement conflicts with the construction given a similar provision in Oakland Press Co. v. NLRB, 606 F.2d 689 (6th Cir.1979). We see no conflict.
The Oakland Press provision said that the agreement would “continue in full force and effect from year to year ... unless written notice of desire to cancel or to terminate is served by either party....” (Emphasis supplied.) The dictionary definition of “unless” is “under any other circumstance than that,” or “except on the condition that,” or “if ... not.” Webster’s New International Dictionary, 3rd Ed. What the Oakland Press agreement said, therefore, was “this agreement shall continue in full force and effect from year to year ... if written notice of desire to cancel or to terminate is not served by either party....” The stated condition would not be met, obviously, if a notice of desire to cancel or to terminate were served by either party, and in light of the parties’ past practice we held that the condition would not be met if a party served notice of a desire to negotiate changes.
In the case at bar, by contrast, the agreement does not use the word “unless.” What this agreement says, rather, is that the agreement “shall renew itself automatically ... provided, however, that ... either party may give written notice of desire to change the terms.... ” It is conceivable, to be sure, that a careless draftsman might have used a “provided, however,” construction when he intended to impose a condition in the way that the word “unless” did in Oakland Press. As explained in our original opinion, however, the practical construction that the Enquirer and the Union seem to have placed on the agreement in this case rules out any possibility that Article XXI was intended to mean something other than what it actually says.
The petition for rehearing is overruled.