IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
_____________________
No. 98-60626
Summary Calendar
_____________________
BETTY COLEMAN; ET AL.,
Plaintiffs,
BETTY COLEMAN; DONALD BRIDGES;
LILLIE CHAMBERS; WALTER DAVIS;
LULA NICHOLSON; FANNIE CALDWELL;
LAURINE TROTTER; GLADYS THOMAS;
GREGORY HAYGOOD,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
BLACKWELL CHEVROLET COMPANY;
HERRIN GEAR MOTORS; GENERAL
MOTORS CORPORATION,
Defendants-Appellees.
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Mississippi
3:96-CV-785-LN
_________________________________________________________________
March 8, 1999
Before JOLLY, SMITH, and WIENER, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
The appellants are employees of Packard Electric Company
(“Packard”), a subsidiary of General Motors (“GM”), who allege they
were unfairly disciplined by GM for actions they did not commit.
They appeal two summary judgment rulings against them in their suit
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that
this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except
under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R. 47.5.4.
seeking recovery for emotional distress caused by the actions of GM
and two of GM’s car dealers. Because we find no error in the
district court’s rulings, we affirm.
GM has a purchase discount program for its employees whereby
they, and their immediate relatives, may purchase GM cars at a
discount. GM discovered that Blackwell Chevrolet Company
(“Blackwell”) and Herrin Gear Motors (“Herrin”) had been obtaining
employee information to process discounts for unrelated purchasers.
After investigating the dealerships, GM concluded that a number of
Packard employees had been selling employee information to salesmen
in the dealerships who in turn used that information to provide
discounts to customers.
In response to this discovery, GM temporarily suspended the
employees who had been selling the information. In addition, GM
notified the employees whose employment information had been used
that, because their information had been used to provide improper
discounts, the employees’ privileges under the discount program
were revoked for two years. The letter warned of additional
sanctions should the employees’ information be used again. The
appellants in this case are all Packard employees whose social
security numbers were used to obtain discounts but who claim they
had no knowledge that this activity was taking place.
Understandably, the appellants were all very upset when they
discovered that they were being punished and that this punishment
would be placed on their employment records. They apparently
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complained to union representatives and to GM management about
their treatment to no avail. Although GM ultimately did send a
letter to the appellants reinstating them into the discount program
and apologizing for the inconvenience, the appellants went for
several months without the benefit of the discount program.
After being reinstated to the program, the appellants sued GM,
Blackwell, and Herrin in state court for damages arising out of the
emotional distress they encountered due to the incident. Pursuant
to a motion by GM, the case was removed to federal court. The
district court granted summary judgment for GM, holding that the
appellants’ claims were preempted by Section 301 of the Labor
Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185 (“LMRA”). In a separate
opinion, the district court granted summary judgment for Blackwell
and Herrin, holding that the appellants were unable to show that
the dealerships’ actions were the proximate cause of the
appellants’ injury.
On appeal, the appellants first argue that the district court
erred when it held that the appellants’ claims against GM are
preempted. The appellants argue that their claims fall under an
exception to the LMRA because the union representatives refused to
provide assistance. See Rabalais v. Dresser Indus., Inc., 566 F.2d
518, 519 (5th Cir. 1978). In Parham v. Carrier Corp., 9 F.3d 383,
390-91 (5th Cir. 1993), we noted that a disgruntled employee must
do something more than simply aver that exhausting union grievance
procedures would be futile. In this case, we find that the
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appellants simply did not take the kind of action necessary to
demonstrate that exhaustion would have been futile. Although all
of the appellants spoke to union officials, none of the appellants
ever filed an official grievance with the union. Furthermore,
while there is affidavit testimony that union officials told the
appellants that there was nothing that they could do, there is no
evidence that union officials would not have processed a filed a
grievance. Like the plaintiff in Parham, the appellants’ “failure
even to attempt to invoke the grievance procedures available to
[them], much less exhaust them,” preempts their suit. Id. at 391.
We therefore hold that the district court did not err in granting
summary judgment with respect to GM.
The appellants’ second argument is that the district court
erred when it held that Blackwell and Herrin’s actions were not the
proximate cause of the appellants’ injuries. The injuries the
plaintiffs suffered were “mental and emotional suffering, loss of
reputation, and possible loss of employment status.” To the extent
that these injuries exist, they are a direct result of GM’s
decision to punish all of the employees whose names were used by
the dealerships. The district court noted that the appellants
maintained throughout the course of the action that GM was aware at
the time it disciplined the appellants that its own investigation
in no way implicated them. Taking this allegation to be true, the
district court concluded that GM’s action amounted to a superseding
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cause. See, e.g., Mississippi City Lines v. Bullock, 13 So.2d 34,
36 (Miss. 1943).
Based on our review of the evidence in this case, we agree.
Although employees of Blackwell and Herrin misused personal
information related to the appellants, the relationship between
that act and the emotional anguish suffered by the appellants is
simply too attenuated to amount to proximate causation. Had
Blackwell or Herrin somehow misled GM into believing that the
appellants were implicated during GM’s subsequent investigation,
this could be a different case. However, in this instance, the
evidence establishes that Blackwell and Herrin provided complete
cooperation to GM during GM’s investigation of this incident. It
is unreasonable to conclude that, after identifying the Packard
employees responsible for this incident, either Blackwell or Herrin
could have anticipated that GM would punish non-implicated parties.
Put slightly differently, after fully cooperating with GM, there
was nothing else, no higher level of care, in which either
Blackwell or Herrin could have engaged that would have prevented
the emotional damage inflicted on the appellants.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court
is
A F F I R M E D.
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