UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 05-1191
JAMES E. ALVEY, JR.; NICHOLAS T. APPLEGARTH;
RONALD BAKER; WILLIAM S. BEADLING; SCOTT T.
BEDORE; STEVEN E. BELL; SCOTT R. BURCHFIELD;
CARL E. CARPENTER; ROBERT CUSICK; DANIEL W.
EVANS; MICHAEL R. FELSOCI; DARRICK J.
GRIFFITH; DONALD GRIFFITH; CLIFTON HORSTIN;
JAMES F. KNIGHT; MARC V. LAMBERTI; CAROL A.
LARKINS; BRIAN K. LEAS; CARLOS A. LEE; JAMES
P. LENGYEL; JAMES W. MAY; ERIC MECHLING; CARL
M. MICK, II; MICHAEL ALEX MITKO; HOWARD E.
OHLER; KAREN OLIVEIRA; ROBERT PULICE; RICHARD
PURKS; RONALD RICHARD; MICHAEL RINE; TODD M.
SIMS; SUSAN SMITH; H. MARK SWIGER; HOWARD
TOMES; RANDY URSO,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
versus
BALL CORPORATION, a foreign corporation; DAVID
MAPLE,
Defendants - Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern
District of West Virginia, at Wheeling. Frederick P. Stamp, Jr.,
District Judge. (CA-04-52-5)
Argued: November 30, 2005 Decided: January 20, 2006
Before MICHAEL and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges, and Walter D. KELLEY,
Jr., United States District Judge for the Eastern District of
Virginia, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: Michael James Florio, Clarksburg, West Virginia, for
Appellants. Charles C. Jackson, MORGAN, LEWIS & BOCKIUS, L.L.P.,
Chicago, Illinois, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: James J. Sellitti,
SELLITTI, NOGAY & MCCUNE, P.L.L.C., Weirton, West Virginia, for
Appellants. Carole S. Katz, John S. Ferrer, MORGAN, LEWIS &
BOCKIUS, L.L.P., Chicago, Illinois; W. Keith Tipton, BALL
CORPORATION, Broomfield, Colorado, for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
See Local Rule 36(c).
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PER CURIAM:
Appellants, employees of a Ball Corporation ("Ball") metal
food container plant in Weirton, West Virginia (collectively
"Alvey"),1 appeal from the district court's order denying their
motion to remand to state court and granting Ball's motion to
dismiss their civil action alleging invasion of privacy and
infliction of emotional distress arising from Ball's search of
their work lockers. Appellants argue that, because the collective
bargaining agreement (the "CBA") contains no reference to locker
searches, adjudication of their state common law claims requires no
interpretation of that agreement. Consequently, they argue that
the district court erred in concluding that § 301 of the Labor
Management Relations Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a) ("the LMRA")
preempted their action.2 For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
1
James Alvey is the named plaintiff for the employees who
brought the present action against the Ball Corporation and David
Maple, the plant manager of the Weirton facility. For simplicity,
we refer to the Appellants as Alvey and the Appellees as Ball.
2
Alvey also argued before the district court and in his reply
brief and oral presentation before this court that the search of
his locker constituted a violation of a substantial West Virginia
public policy. He further maintained that such a public policy
constitutes the very type of nonnegotiable rights that this court
identified as being excepted from preemption in Clark v. Newport
News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 937 F.2d 934, 937 (4th Cir. 1991)
(quoting Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 212 (1985)).
We deem this argument waived because Alvey failed to raise it in
his initial brief before this court. Schlossberg v. Barney, 380
F.3d 174, 182 n.6 (4th Cir. 2004). Even if Alvey had not waived
the argument, we are persuaded by the district court's analysis
concluding that no clearly defined public policy concerning the
search of employee lockers exists in West Virginia.
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I.
As part of an investigation into allegations of widespread
sale and use of illegal drugs at the Weirton plant, Ball assigned
four plant management personnel to conduct a search of all of the
lockers in the facility. Although Ball owned the lockers, they
were assigned to and secured by locks purchased by individual
employees. Prior to searching the lockers, Ball drafted a protocol
for the search and shared that protocol with representatives of the
Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International
Union ("the union"), which represents the employees. Ball
personnel conducted the searches in the presence of the union
representatives. A typical search involved cutting the lock
securing the locker, examining the contents, returning the contents
to the locker and issuing a Ball-supplied lock to secure the locker
once more.
Following the locker searches, the union filed several
grievances pursuant to the CBA, alleging that Ball changed existing
plant policies and safety rules without bargaining with or
notifying the union; the locker searches constituted an "illegal
search and seizure;" and the locker searches were unsanitary
because the individuals conducting the searches failed to change
their gloves following the search of each locker. Less than one
month later, Alvey filed the present action in state court,
alleging that the locker searches constituted an invasion of
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privacy and intentional and/or reckless or negligent infliction of
emotional distress.
Ball removed the case to the district court and filed a motion
to dismiss, maintaining that Alvey had failed to exhaust the
grievance and arbitration provisions as required by the CBA. Alvey
filed a memorandum in opposition to the motion to dismiss and a
motion to remand the case to the state court. The district court
concluded that Alvey, in order to prevail on his claims, would have
to prove that Ball's actions had been wrongful under the
circumstances, including the contractual circumstances created by
the CBA. Therefore, resolution of those claims was substantially
dependent upon analysis of the terms of the CBA, resulting in
preemption by § 301 of the LMRA. It further concluded that Alvey's
claims fell under the CBA grievance clause, requiring Alvey to
exhaust his remedies under the CBA before seeking judicial relief.
Accordingly, it denied Alvey's motion to remand and granted Ball's
motion to dismiss.
We review the denial of a motion to remand to state court and
the question of whether a plaintiff's state law claims are
preempted de novo. Lontz v. Tharp, 413 F.3d 435, 439 (4th Cir.
2005).
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II.
Alvey argues that his claims are not preempted by § 301 of the
LMRA because adjudication of those claims does not require
interpretation of the CBA. He points out that the CBA lacks any
reference to locker searches and argues that the grievance and
arbitration procedures in the CBA apply only to alleged violations
of the CBA. Therefore, according to Alvey, because the CBA is
silent as to locker searches, its terms need not be interpreted and
have no preemptive effect in the present case. We disagree.
In reaching this conclusion, we are guided by the language of
our opinions emphasizing the breadth of the reach of § 301 of the
LMRA:
Section 301 of the LMRA expresses a federal policy,
mandated by Congress, that federal law be applied in
addressing disputes arising out of labor contracts. In
furtherance of the federal policy, when resolution of a
state-law claim is substantially dependent upon analysis
of the terms of an agreement made between the parties in
a labor contract, the claim is preempted by federal law.
Moreover, the contractual rights and obligations assumed
by the parties in a collective-bargaining agreement
extend beyond those expressly stated and include implied
rights of reasonable performance and the duty to act in
good faith. Consequently, deciding whether a party acted
reasonably and in good faith in carrying out a right or
obligation under the collective bargaining agreement
requires a reference to the contract and an
interpretation of its provisions, thereby invoking § 301
preemption.
Clark v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 937 F.2d 934,
937 (4th Cir. 1991) (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
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Alvey's argument against preemption is further foreclosed by
our holding in McCormick v. AT&T Tech., Inc., 934 F.2d 531 (1991).
In McCormick, an employee filed a complaint against his former
employer, "alleging that under Virginia tort law the [former
employer's] actions in disposing of the contents of his [work]
locker constituted intentional infliction of emotional distress,
negligent infliction of emotional distress, conversion, and
negligence in the care of a bailment." Id. at 533. Following the
analysis of the Supreme Court in Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic
Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 406-10 (1988), we concluded that the
employee's state law claims were preempted by § 301 of the LMRA
because their resolution required interpretation of a CBA.
McCormick, 934 F.2d at 535-37.
The analysis and holding of McCormick are directly applicable
here.3 As was the case in McCormick, an allegation of some sort of
wrongful conduct is a necessary element of each of Alvey's causes
of action. Invasion of privacy, in the context of the present
3
When asked, at oral argument, to distinguish McCormick,
Alvey's counsel contended that "West Virginia law, unlike Virginia
law, which was at issue in McCormick, creates a non-negotiable
right against employer-issued lockers, secured by locks provided by
the employees, from being broken into essentially by the employer."
We addressed this contention in footnote 2.
Counsel further argued that the CBA in McCormick contained a
statement that "all disputes between the parties must be submitted
to the grievance process," whereas, in the CBA at issue here, "the
term grievance is narrowly defined to include only claims of
violation of the agreement." We find no reference in McCormick to
CBA language that supports the distinction counsel seeks to draw.
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case, requires an "unreasonable intrusion upon the seclusion of
another." Rohrbaugh v. Wal-Mart Stores, 212 W. Va. 358, 364 (W.
Va. 2002). Intentional or reckless infliction of emotional
distress, which is synonymous with the tort of outrage in West
Virginia, requires conduct on the part of the defendant that is
"atrocious, intolerable, and so extreme and outrageous as to exceed
the bounds of decency." Williamson v. Harden, 214 W. Va. 77, 81
(W. Va. 2003). Negligent infliction of emotional distress requires
negligence on the part of the defendant. See Heldreth v. Marrs,
188 W. Va. 481, 485 (W. Va. 1992). Moreover, West Virginia follows
the general rule that the plaintiff bears the burden of proof in a
tort action. Miller v. United Fuel Gas Co., 88 W. Va. 82, 91 (W.
Va. 1921).
Whether Ball's actions in searching the lockers were wrongful-
-either unreasonable, outrageous or negligent--cannot be determined
in a vacuum. Rather, that determination requires a consideration
of the context in which the actions occurred, which necessarily
includes the contractual circumstances embodied in the CBA. Our
comments concerning management's action in McCormick are
particularly pertinent:
[Management's action] is not a matter of intrinsic moral
import but a question of legal authority --whether
management had the lawful right to proceed as it did.
The rightness or wrongness of the action has not been
committed to the common law of tort, but to the legal
arrangements embodied in a contractual agreement, in this
case through collective bargaining. State tort claims
are preempted where reference to a collective bargaining
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agreement is necessary to determine whether a "duty of
care" exists or to define "the nature and scope of that
duty, that is, whether, and to what extent, the
[employer's] duty extended to the particular
responsibilities alleged by [the employee] in h[is]
complaint." Whether the actions of management personnel
. . . were in any way wrongful simply cannot be
determined without examining the collective bargaining
agreement to ascertain the extent of any duty [the
company] may have owed [the plaintiff].
McCormick, 934 F.2d at 536 (quoting IBEW, AFL-CIO v. Hechler, 481
U.S. 851, 862 (1987)) (citation omitted).
In McCormick, we also addressed Alvey's argument that the lack
of a specific reference in a CBA to the activity at issue in a
state tort claim precludes preemption:
Although management's rights and responsibilities
regarding employee lockers are not explicitly delineated
in the agreement, a collective bargaining agreement "is
more than a contract; it is a generalized code to govern
a myriad of cases which the draftsmen cannot wholly
anticipate." United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior
& Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 578 (1960). . . .
. . . The specifics as to management conduct
regarding the lockers . . . need not be spelled out in
all their detail and refinement for the collective
bargaining agreement to be applicable. Rather, the
collective bargaining agreement consists, in addition to
its express provisions, of an "industrial common law
--the practices of the industry and the shop-- [which] is
equally a part of the collective bargaining agreement
although not expressed in it." United Steelworkers, 363
U.S. at 581-82. "There are too many people, too many
problems, too many unforeseeable contingencies to make
the words of the contract the exclusive source of rights
and duties. . . . The governmental nature of the
collective-bargaining process demand[s] a common law of
the shop which implements and furnishes the context of
the agreement." Id. at 579 (quoting Cox, Reflections
Upon Labor Arbitration, 72 Harv. L. Rev. 1482, 1498-99
(1959)). Thus, the agreement creates in employees and
their employers implied rights and duties, the contours
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of which are a matter "of federal contract
interpretation." Allis-Chalmers Corp. [v. Lueck], 471
U.S. [202, 215 (1985)]. Here, interpretation of the
collective bargaining agreement is essential to determine
whether and to what extent [the company] owed [the
plaintiff] a duty concerning his work locker. If
management owed him no duty and was entitled under the
agreement to [take the actions that] it did, its actions
ipso facto could not have been wrongful under state law.
McCormick, 934 F.2d at 536-537 (emphasis added).
As was the case in McCormick, the CBA between Ball and the
union contains several general provisions relevant to resolution of
Alvey's complaints. In Article 4 of the CBA, "[Ball] retains the
right to manage its business, to make all decisions, and to take
whatever action it deems necessary in connection therewith, subject
to the provisions of [the CBA]." Articles 15 and 21, respectively,
state Ball's objective to "eliminate actual or potential health
hazards" and "policy to provide a workplace free from the adverse
effects of substance abuse." Although these provisions do not
reference locker searches specifically, they do invest certain
rights in and impose certain duties on Ball. Whether the actions
of which Alvey complains fall within the scope of those rights and
duties necessarily requires interpretation of the CBA, and thereby
results in preemption of Alvey's state law tort claims by § 301 of
the LMRA.
Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
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