IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 00-11223
RICHARD KAUFMAN, Etc; ET AL
Plaintiffs
RICHARD KAUFMAN, DR, On behalf of himself and all others similarly
situated; JACK MARUT, On behalf of himself and all others similarly
situated; C ANTHONY WAINSRIGHT, On behalf of himself and all others
similarly situated; JEFFREY KRASNOFF, DR, On behalf of himself and
all others similarly situated
Plaintiffs-Appellees
versus
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION; ET AL
Defendants
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION; RICHART T LAVOY; BRIAN A MAYHEW; DAVID
ALDRICH; STANLEY BISSELL; J S DITTY; ERNEST DRYER; DAVID DUQUEMIN;
MARK HUNNIBEL; JEFF MARCHAND; STEVE ROACH; RANDY TROMMER
Defendants-Appellants
STEVEN CARLI, On behalf of himself and all others similarly
situated; SHON PREJEAN, On behalf of himself and all others
similarly situated
Plaintiffs-Appellees
versus
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION; RICHART T LAVOY; BRIAN A MAYHEW
Defendants-Appellants
_______________________
CENTER FOR REHABILITATIVE MEDICINE
Plaintiff-Appellee
versus
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION
Defendant-Appellant
_______________________
JIM CASHION, Individually and on behalf of the Plaintiff Class;
JOELLEN CASHION, Individually and on behalf of the Plaintiff Class
Plaintiffs-Appellees
versus
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION; ET AL
Defendants
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION; RICHARD T LAVOY; BRIAN A MAYHEW; L G
FOSTER; ROBERT AMES; NORMAN A PATTERSON, JR; DENNIS M BRESLIN
Defendants-Appellants
_______________________
MARK LEWIS, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated
Plaintiff-Appellee
versus
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION; RICHARD T LAVOY; BRIAN A MAYHEW
Defendants-Appellants
_______________________
NANCY GEIDEL; ET AL
Plaintiffs
NANCY GEIDEL; RALPH A MACDONALD; MARY C CASCINO; DAVE ROGERS;
CAROLYN ROGERS
Plaintiffs-Appellees
versus
ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION
Defendant-Appellant
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Texas
November 21, 2001
Before HIGGINBOTHAM, BARKSDALE, and STEWART, Circuit Judges.
2
PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:
A union of airline pilots violated the order of a federal
court by continuing its work slowdown. The union has since paid
substantial fines for violating the order and now faces suits
seeking money damages under state law for the stoppage damages
caused by the slowdown activity that violated the court order.
These claimants attempt to run their state claims around Garmon
preemption under an argument that state law would not here
interfere with the federal labor machinery and its distinct
remedial schemes for labor peace because the conflict complained of
violates a federal court order. At the same time the state law
claimants argue that they are not seeking to supplement the federal
order by their suits. The district court accepted these arguments.
We do not and reverse. We are persuaded that the claims are
preempted under the Garmon doctrine and do not reach the question
of preemption under the Airline Deregulation Act.
I
The Allied Pilots Association is the exclusive bargaining
agent for the pilots of American Airlines, Inc. From February 6
through February 9, 1999 the APA staged a “sick-out”—an organized
false reporting of illness to effect a work stoppage. On February
10, American sought and received a temporary restraining order from
3
the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas
against the APA. The TRO, among other things, required the APA to
make “all reasonable efforts” to end the sick-out. The APA
manifestly did not do so, and on February 12, the trial judge heard
American’s motion to hold the APA in contempt. Ultimately, the
district court awarded American $45 million in compensatory
damages,1 a ruling which was upheld by this Court.2
This is a class action brought against the APA to recover
economic damages claimed by over 300,000 displaced passengers as a
result of the sick-out. The plaintiffs originally asserted both
federal and state claims,3 and the district court dismissed all
claims with prejudice except a state claim of tortious interference
with contract arising from post-TRO conduct of the APA.4 Finding
that this claim was not preempted by federal law, the district
court dismissed the claim without prejudice to its being refiled in
state court. The APA now appeals that decision.
1
Am. Airlines, Inc. v. Allied Pilots Ass’n, 53 F. Supp.2d 909, 913 (N.D.
Tex. 1999).
2
Am. Airlines, Inc. v. Allied Pilots Ass’n, 228 F.3d 574, 586-87 (5th Cir.
2000).
3
The plaintiffs originally asserted claims under (1) the Railway Labor
Act; (2) the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act; (3) state common
law claims of civil conspiracy, negligence per se, and tortious interference with
contract.
4
The district court dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ claims that were
predicated on pre-TRO conduct, including tortious interference with contract,
which was dismissed on Garmon preemption grounds. The plaintiffs do not appeal
the dismissal of their pre-TRO-based claims and apparently concede that those
claims are properly Garmon preempted. Therefore, our only task is to decide
whether the entering of the TRO changes this result for their post-TRO tortious
interference claims.
4
II
A
We review questions of federal preemption de novo, including
Garmon preemption, which gets its name from the Supreme Court’s
ruling in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon.5 In Garmon,
an employer sued a union in state court to recover damages from
picketing that allegedly violated the National Labor Relations Act.
The Court held that this state remedy was preempted by federal law
because the state courts must yield to the exclusive jurisdiction
of the NLRB—even when the NLRB has declined to take jurisdiction.6
Preemption is necessary because “the exercise of state power over
a particular area of activity threaten[s] interference with the
clearly indicated policy of industrial relations ....”7 Concerned
with “conflict in its broadest sense” the Court eschewed a focus on
the type of state regulation or claim, and adopted an approach
that looks to the “nature of the activities which the States have
sought to regulate.”8 Garmon has broad scope, and requires federal
preemption of state causes of action “if they attach liability to
5
359 U.S. 236 (1959). Garmon preemption, first applied in the context of
the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., has been extended to
the RLA. Brotherhood of R.R. Trainmen v. Jacksonville Terminal Co., 394 U.S.
369, 383 (1969).
6
Garmon, 359 U.S. at 238.
7
Id. at 243.
8
Id.
5
conduct that is arguably protected ... or arguably prohibited” by
federal labor relations law.9
Garmon itself recognized two exceptions to preemption. First,
some conduct will “touch[] interests so deeply rooted in local
feeling and responsibility that ... [the Court] could not infer
Congress had deprived the States of the power to act.”10 The
classic example of this exception, provided by the Court in Garmon
itself,11 is that of union activities involving violence.12 The
second exception is for matters only of “peripheral concern” to
federal labor relations law.13 Neither of these exceptions apply
here. The sick-out was non-violent and certainly, irrespective of
the TRO issue, cannot be characterized as “peripheral” to labor
relations law, since it is itself a work stoppage, one which a
district court found to be prohibited by the RLA.14
9
Mobile Mechanical Contractors Ass’n, Inc. v. Carlough, 664 F.2d 481, 487
(5th Cir. 1981).
10
Garmon, 359 U.S. at 244.
11
Id. at 247 (“It is true that we have allowed the States to grant
compensation for the consequences ... of conduct marked by violence and imminent
threats to the public order.”).
12
See, e.g., Youngdahl v. Rainfair, Inc., 355 U.S. 131, 139-40 (1957)
(upholding state court injunction against violent picketing).
13
Garmon, 359 U.S. at 243.
14
The RLA requires that “minor disputes” including those over the meaning
of a collective bargaining agreement provision on pay, rules, or working
conditions, be submitted to binding arbitration in the event that negotiations
fail to produce a solution. 45 U.S.C. § 152. Federal district courts may (as
here) enjoin strikes over minor disputes in enforcing the RLA. Consolidated Rail
Corp. v. Railway Labor Executives Ass’n, 491 U.S. 299, 304 (1989).
6
The Court has explicitly rejected a formalistic implementation
of Garmon, and invited a balancing of state interests and federal
regulatory interests in analyzing the preemption question.15 The
Court has thus refused to apply Garmon preemption where “it is safe
to presume that judicial supervision [by the states] will not
disserve the interests promoted by the federal labor statutes.”16
At the same time, Garmon preemption is not confined to state
claims made by parties to the labor relationship and third-party
claims may also be preempted, because they similarly threaten the
balance of labor-management relations.17 In Wisconsin Department
of Industry, Labor & Human Relations v. Gould, Inc.,18 the Court
reaffirmed the Garmon preemption principle as “prevent[ing] states
not only from setting forth standards of conduct inconsistent with
the substantive requirements of the NLRA, but also from providing
their own regulatory or judicial remedies for conduct prohibited or
15
Farmer v. United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of Am., 430 U.S.
290, 297 (1977) (stating that a court must “determine the scope of the general
rule by examining the state interests in regulating the conduct in question and
the potential for interference with the federal regulatory scheme.”).
16
Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, 403 U.S. 274, 297-98 (1971); see
also Windfield v. Groen Div. Dover Corp., 890 F.2d 764, 766 (5th Cir. 1989).
17
United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 718-20 (1966) (preempting
damages remedy under state law for injury resulting from peaceful portion of
union protesting at mine that caused contractor to lose employment and haulage
contract); Jackson Terminal, 394 U.S.at 381-82 (holding that state court could
not issue injunction against peaceful strike sought by third-party railroad
terminal operator to avoid economic damages from shutdown of terminal).
18
475 U.S. 282 (1986).
7
arguably prohibited by the Act.”19 In Gould the Court struck down
a Wisconsin statute that prevented the state from doing business
with companies that had been judicially determined to have
committed three separate violations of the NLRA within a five year
period.20 “That Wisconsin has chosen to use its spending power
rather than its police power in enacting the debarment statute does
not significantly lessen the inherent potential for conflict when
two separate remedies are brought to bear on the same activity.”21
Garmon preemption must extend to all types of state regulation that
conflicts with federal labor relations law, whether that is by
state statute, or state judicial supervision, whether in litigation
between parties to the labor relationship or between downstream
injured persons and parties to the labor relationship.
B
We have previously stated that Garmon preemption is required
when a state cause of action poses “a serious risk of conflict with
national labor policy.”22 The Court has directed that we look not
to the effect on labor-management relations of allowing a
particular claim to proceed, but rather to conflict in the
19
Id. at 286 (emphasis added).
20
Id. at 283.
21
Id. at 289.
22
Carlough, 664 F.2d at 487.
8
“broadest sense.”23 Gould reminds us that adding state remedies or
penalties to the mix would be a “conflict” necessitating
preemption.24
The plaintiffs take a narrow view of what constitutes such a
conflict and argue that the federal and state legal regimes cannot
be in conflict in this case, since a violation of the TRO is, of
course, a violation of federal law. If the two regimes are not
contradictory, they reason, there can be no preemption. This
argument cannot stand in light of Gould. In Gould the plaintiff
was being punished by the state remedial scheme for its violations
of federal labor law. There was no contradiction between the two
regimes, only a supplementation of the federal remedial scheme by
the state. Therefore, the plaintiffs’ niggardly view of “conflict”
itself conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decision in Gould, and
must be rejected.
Garmon preemption does not depend on the merits of an
adjudication of the conduct’s legality under federal labor law—both
prohibited and protected conduct are shielded from liability under
state law. Plaintiffs argue, however, and the district court
agreed, that the TRO put the APA on notice that its conduct was
23
Garmon, 359 U.S. at 242 (“The nature of the judicial process precludes
an ad hoc inquiry into the special problems of labor-management relations
involved in a particular set of occurrences in order to ascertain the precise
nature and degree of the federal-state conflict.”).
24
Gould, 475 U.S. at 286 (quoting Garmon, 359 U.S. at 247 ("[T]o allow the
State to grant a remedy ... which has been withheld from the National Labor
Relations Board only accentuates the danger of conflict ....”)).
9
illegal, and therefore Garmon preemption is not needed to vindicate
the goals of federal labor law. We must disagree—if conduct is
clearly protected or prohibited by federal labor law, to our eyes
the case for preemption is stronger.25 Consequentially, the
issuance of the TRO, indicating that the sick-out was likely to be
found illegal under the RLA, only enhances the case for preemption
of the state claim here. The concern of Garmon is not so much with
the righting of labor wrongs, the concern of the labor relations
laws themselves, as with the uniformity and singularity of remedy
provided by federal law. It is a national labor policy—as this
case makes vivid.
The district court also found that attaching liability to
post-TRO conduct that violates state law will not meaningfully
disrupt labor-management relations—that is, that it will not
seriously harm the federal regulatory scheme for labor relations.
Garmon preemption requires the balancing of state interests with
federal regulatory interests.26 However, irrespective of the state
25
Gould, 475 U.S. at 283-84 (finding that Garmon required preemption of
statutory regime that punished firms that “found by judicially enforced orders
of the National Labor Relations Board to have violated the NLRA in three separate
cases within a 5 year period.”); see also Sears, Roebuck, and Co. v. San Diego
County Dist. Council of Carpenters, 436 U.S. 180, 187 (1978) (distinguishing
those activities that are “arguably” protected or prohibited from those, even
more deserving of preemption, where “it is clear or may fairly be assumed that
the subject matter which the state court sought to regulate ... is either
prohibited or protected by the Federal Act.” (internal quotation omitted)).
26
See Sheet Metal Workers Local Union No. 54, AFL-CIO v. E.F. Etie Sheet
Metal Co., 1 F.3d 1464, 1470 (5th Cir. 1993) (“That inquiry requires not only
looking to the factual bases of each controversy, but also examining the
interests protected by each claim and the relief requested.”).
10
interest in protecting private parties from interference with their
freedom of contract,27 the activities here are so fundamental that
Garmon preemption must immunize them from state tort liability if
the RLA structure is to be preserved. While courts have refused to
apply Garmon preemption to state tort claims that served
substantial state interests and did not threaten interference with
the federal regulatory scheme,28 this is not our case. Slicing the
claim into before and after the TRO does not change the reality
that the state law is being asked to take hold of the same
controversy as the federal labor laws.
Finally, we are not persuaded by the plaintiffs’ effort to
distinguish the pre-TRO conduct of the APA from its post-TRO
conduct.29 “It is the conduct being regulated, not the formal
description of governing legal standards, that is the proper focus
27
Cf. Local 926, Int’l Union of Operating Engineers AFL-CIO v. Jones, 460
U.S. 669, 689 (1983) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (“There can be no doubt that
safeguarding the integrity of contractual relations is an interest of paramount
importance in an economy such as ours.”).
28
See, e.g., Farmer, 430 U.S. at 304-05 (refusing to preempt state claim
of intentional infliction of emotional distress arising out of discrimination in
hiring hall practices because proof of state claim required proof of “outrageous
conduct” and the “potential for interference is insufficient to counterbalance
the legitimate and substantial interest of the State in protecting its
citizens”); Belknapp v. Hale, 463 U.S. 491, 510-12 (1983) (holding breach of
contract and misrepresentation claims by replacement workers against employer not
preempted even though conduct was arguably prohibited by NLRA because the Board
would focus on strikers’ rights, not replacement workers’ rights); Windfield, 890
F.2d at 769-70 (refusing to preempt state claims arising out of employer’s
personal guarantee to former employee because they required only a “discrete,
narrow inquiry into the relationship between [the employee] and his former
employer.”).
29
The plaintiffs argued in the district court that their claims based upon
pre-TRO conduct were not Garmon preempted, but the district court held that those
claims were preempted, and the plaintiffs do not appeal that determination.
11
of concern.”30 The existence of a TRO does not transform conduct
constituting a work-stoppage, and therefore central to federal
labor relations law, into conduct falling outside of the ambit of
Garmon. We note also that any effort to characterize this suit as
arising out of a violation of the TRO encounters an additional
blockade—the plaintiffs are not entitled to any remedy for
violation of a TRO to which they are not a party.31
III
The APA also argues that the plaintiffs’ claims are preempted
by the Airline Deregulation Act. Since we have concluded that
those claims are Garmon preempted, we need not reach the question
of ADA preemption.
IV
Because the plaintiffs’ state law claims of tortious
interference with contract are Garmon preempted, we REMAND this
case to the district court and instruct that the claims be
DISMISSED with prejudice.
30
Lockridge, 403 U.S. at 292 (emphasis added) (applying Garmon preemption
to a state law claim for breach of contract arising out of a union’s
discrimination against the plaintiff).
31
Northside Realty Associates, Inc. v. United States, 605 F.2d 1348, 1356-
57 (5th Cir. 1979) (holding that compensatory damages for nonparties could not
be granted as part of Government’s remedy in civil contempt proceeding against
real estate corporation).
12
13