Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry
Encyclopedia
Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry, 494 U.S. 558 (1990), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court
held that an action by an employee for a breach of a labor union
's duty of fair representation entitled him to a jury trial
under the Seventh Amendment
.
/petitioner union, Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391
, were parties to a collective bargaining agreement which governed employment at McLean. The plaintiff
s/respondents in this matter were Union members employed as truck drivers by McLean. In 1982, McLean began to shut down some of its terminals and reorganizing others. The company transferred plaintiffs to its terminal in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
, and granted them special seniority
rights over inactive employees at that terminal who had been temporarily laid off
.
After working at Winston-Salem for six weeks, the plaintiffs were alternately laid off and recalled several times. Some of the laid off truckers were stripped of their special seniority rights. The plaintiffs filed a grievance with the union, alleging that McLean had breached the collective bargaining agreement by giving inactive employees preference over them. The grievance committee ordered McLean to recall the plaintiffs and lay off the inactive drivers who had been recalled, and to recognize plaintiffs’ special seniority rights until the inactive employees were recalled properly. McLean obeyed the order of the grievance committee at first, but then recalled the inactive employees, causing them to gain seniority status over the plaintiffs. In the next round of layoffs, this meant that the plaintiffs were laid off first. Plaintiffs then filed another grievance with the union, alleging that McLean’s actions were intended to circumvent the grievance committee’s initial order. But the grievance committee held that McLean had acted legitimately. This pattern of temporary layoffs and recalls continued, prompting plaintiffs to file another grievance, but the Union did not refer the third grievance to a grievance committee, instead ruling that the relevant issues had already been decided.
In July 1983, plaintiffs brought suit against both the Union and McLean in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina
, alleging that McLean had violated the collective bargaining agreement in violation of the Labor Management Relations Act, , and alleging that the Union had breached its duty of fair representation. Plaintiffs requested a permanent injunction
requiring the defendants to restore their seniority and cease their illegal activity. They further requested compensatory damages for lost wages and health benefits. McLean filed for bankruptcy
in 1986, and all the claims against it were voluntarily dismissed
.
Plaintiffs had requested a jury trial
in their pleadings, but the Union moved to strike the demand for a jury trial, on the grounds that the no right to a jury trial exists in a duty of fair representation suit. The District Court denied the defendant’s motion to strike, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
affirmed, holding that the Seventh Amendment entitled the plaintiffs to a jury trial on their claims for monetary damages.
wrote for the majority. He began his opinion by explaining that the right to a jury trial provided by the Seventh Amendment encompasses more than the common law
forms of action recognized in 1791 (when the Bill of Rights
was ratified), but rather any lawsuit
in which parties’ legal rights were to be determined, as opposed to suits which only involve equitable rights and remedies
. He proposed a two-part test, first comparing the statutory
action created by Congress
to the 18th century actions brought in the courts of England
prior to the merger of the courts of law and equity; then, examining the remedy sought by the plaintiff to determine whether it was legal or equitable in nature.
Since actions to enforce collective bargaining agreements were unknown in 18th-century England (such agreements were unlawful at the time), the union argued that the action brought by the plaintiffs was, in essence, an attempt to vacate an arbitration
award, which historically was considered an action in equity. Marshall rejected this argument because there had been no arbitration with regards to the union’s duty of fair representation. The union further argued that the suit was comparable to an action for breach of fiduciary duty (e.g. a suit concerning a trust), which was also considered an equitable action. The plaintiffs countered by comparing their suit to an action against an attorney
for malpractice
, which was an action at law.
Marshall conceded that the analogy to a trust action was more convincing, but reasoned that the right to a jury trial depended more on the nature of the issues to be tried. Although there was a fiduciary duty issue between the plaintiffs and the union, there was also an underlying breach of contract
—that of the collective bargaining agreement between McLean and the plaintiffs.
Since the first part of the analysis failed to produce a dispositive result, Marshall then turned to the type of relief the plaintiffs sought. The only remaining remedy the plaintiffs sought against the union was compensatory damages, which are the traditional legal remedy. While restitution
ary remedies such as back pay and benefits may be characterized as equitable when sought from an employer, the damages here were sought from the Union. Thus, Marshall held that the plaintiffs were requesting a legal remedy, and therefore, on the balance of the issues, were entitled to have their case heard by a jury.
(such as monetary damages), Brennan would simply assume that the right to a jury trial existed, unless Congress had assigned the particular action to a non-Article III tribunal
, and a jury trial would frustrate the intent of Congress.
Brennan went on to criticize the Court’s historical analysis of traditional equitable and legal causes of action. Many of the statutory rights created by Congress are not analogous to anything which existed in the courts of 18th-century England, and judges lack the historical training to analyze such matters consistently. Different justices and historians have come to different conclusions as to what is analogous to a “legal” or “equitable” action. He concluded that the right to a jury trial was too important for the Court to allow for such an uncertainty.
concurred separately, on similar grounds as Justice Brennan did. He felt that the Court’s attempt to find an 18th-century common law analogue to the collective-bargaining and fair representation actions in this case was a misguided historical judgment, and that the type of relief sought by the plaintiff was the relevant inquiry. He explained that it was perfectly rational to have members of the community—i.e. a jury of one’s peers—hear such a case.
, with whom Justices O'Connor and Scalia joined, dissented, arguing that the majority’s analogy to an equitable trust action should have been dispositive in this case. He further argued that the relationship between the union and its workers was more similar to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary than an attorney and his client, because a union had a duty of fair representation to all of its workers and did not normally be compelled to act as an agent by one beneficiary. He also stated that the relief sought by the plaintiffs was equitable in nature, because it sought to make the plaintiffs whole, and that the majority unnecessarily separated out the legal and equitable issues in this case.
Justice Kennedy defended the historical comparison of the cause of action to the “suits at common law” available in 1791. He felt that to expand the right beyond what was available to plaintiffs at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights was nothing more than rewriting the Constitution, stating “[w]e cannot preserve a right existing in 1791 unless we look to history to identify it”. 494 U.S. at 593.
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
held that an action by an employee for a breach of a labor union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
's duty of fair representation entitled him to a jury trial
Jury trial
A jury trial is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact which are then applied by a judge...
under the Seventh Amendment
Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights, codifies the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases. However, in some civil cases, the Supreme Court has not incorporated the right to a jury trial to the states in the fashion which...
.
Facts
McLean Trucking Corporation and the defendantDefendant
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute...
/petitioner union, Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....
, were parties to a collective bargaining agreement which governed employment at McLean. The plaintiff
Plaintiff
A plaintiff , also known as a claimant or complainant, is the term used in some jurisdictions for the party who initiates a lawsuit before a court...
s/respondents in this matter were Union members employed as truck drivers by McLean. In 1982, McLean began to shut down some of its terminals and reorganizing others. The company transferred plaintiffs to its terminal in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Winston-Salem is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina, with a 2010 population of 229,617. Winston-Salem is the county seat and largest city of Forsyth County and the fourth-largest city in the state. Winston-Salem is the second largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region and is home to...
, and granted them special seniority
Seniority
Seniority is the concept of a person or group of people being in charge or in command of another person or group. This control is often granted to the senior person due to experience or length of service in a given position, but it is not uncommon for a senior person to have less experience or...
rights over inactive employees at that terminal who had been temporarily laid off
Layoff
Layoff , also called redundancy in the UK, is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or a group of employees for business reasons, such as when certain positions are no longer necessary or when a business slow-down occurs...
.
After working at Winston-Salem for six weeks, the plaintiffs were alternately laid off and recalled several times. Some of the laid off truckers were stripped of their special seniority rights. The plaintiffs filed a grievance with the union, alleging that McLean had breached the collective bargaining agreement by giving inactive employees preference over them. The grievance committee ordered McLean to recall the plaintiffs and lay off the inactive drivers who had been recalled, and to recognize plaintiffs’ special seniority rights until the inactive employees were recalled properly. McLean obeyed the order of the grievance committee at first, but then recalled the inactive employees, causing them to gain seniority status over the plaintiffs. In the next round of layoffs, this meant that the plaintiffs were laid off first. Plaintiffs then filed another grievance with the union, alleging that McLean’s actions were intended to circumvent the grievance committee’s initial order. But the grievance committee held that McLean had acted legitimately. This pattern of temporary layoffs and recalls continued, prompting plaintiffs to file another grievance, but the Union did not refer the third grievance to a grievance committee, instead ruling that the relevant issues had already been decided.
In July 1983, plaintiffs brought suit against both the Union and McLean in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina
United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina is a United States district court with jurisdiction over 24 counties in the center of North Carolina...
, alleging that McLean had violated the collective bargaining agreement in violation of the Labor Management Relations Act, , and alleging that the Union had breached its duty of fair representation. Plaintiffs requested a permanent injunction
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
requiring the defendants to restore their seniority and cease their illegal activity. They further requested compensatory damages for lost wages and health benefits. McLean filed for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy in the United States
Bankruptcy in the United States is governed under the United States Constitution which authorizes Congress to enact "uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States." Congress has exercised this authority several times since 1801, most recently by adopting the Bankruptcy...
in 1986, and all the claims against it were voluntarily dismissed
Voluntary dismissal
Voluntary dismissal is when a lawsuit is terminated by voluntary request of the plaintiff . A voluntary dismissal with prejudice is the modern descendant of the common law procedure known as retraxit.In the United States, voluntary dismissal...
.
Plaintiffs had requested a jury trial
Jury trial
A jury trial is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact which are then applied by a judge...
in their pleadings, but the Union moved to strike the demand for a jury trial, on the grounds that the no right to a jury trial exists in a duty of fair representation suit. The District Court denied the defendant’s motion to strike, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is a federal court located in Richmond, Virginia, with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:*District of Maryland*Eastern District of North Carolina...
affirmed, holding that the Seventh Amendment entitled the plaintiffs to a jury trial on their claims for monetary damages.
Majority opinion
Justice MarshallThurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
wrote for the majority. He began his opinion by explaining that the right to a jury trial provided by the Seventh Amendment encompasses more than the common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
forms of action recognized in 1791 (when the Bill of Rights
Bill of rights
A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or...
was ratified), but rather any lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
in which parties’ legal rights were to be determined, as opposed to suits which only involve equitable rights and remedies
Equitable remedy
Equitable remedies are judicial remedies developed and granted by courts of equity, as opposed to courts of common law. Equitable remedies were granted by the Court of Chancery in England, and remain available today in most common law jurisdictions. In many jurisdictions, legal and equitable...
. He proposed a two-part test, first comparing the statutory
Statute
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations...
action created by Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
to the 18th century actions brought in the courts of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
prior to the merger of the courts of law and equity; then, examining the remedy sought by the plaintiff to determine whether it was legal or equitable in nature.
Since actions to enforce collective bargaining agreements were unknown in 18th-century England (such agreements were unlawful at the time), the union argued that the action brought by the plaintiffs was, in essence, an attempt to vacate an arbitration
Arbitration
Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons , by whose decision they agree to be bound...
award, which historically was considered an action in equity. Marshall rejected this argument because there had been no arbitration with regards to the union’s duty of fair representation. The union further argued that the suit was comparable to an action for breach of fiduciary duty (e.g. a suit concerning a trust), which was also considered an equitable action. The plaintiffs countered by comparing their suit to an action against an attorney
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
for malpractice
Malpractice
In law, malpractice is a type of negligence in, which the professional under a duty to act, fails to follow generally accepted professional standards, and that breach of duty is the proximate cause of injury to a plaintiff who suffers harm...
, which was an action at law.
Marshall conceded that the analogy to a trust action was more convincing, but reasoned that the right to a jury trial depended more on the nature of the issues to be tried. Although there was a fiduciary duty issue between the plaintiffs and the union, there was also an underlying breach of contract
Breach of contract
Breach of contract is a legal cause of action in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party's performance....
—that of the collective bargaining agreement between McLean and the plaintiffs.
Since the first part of the analysis failed to produce a dispositive result, Marshall then turned to the type of relief the plaintiffs sought. The only remaining remedy the plaintiffs sought against the union was compensatory damages, which are the traditional legal remedy. While restitution
Restitution
The law of restitution is the law of gains-based recovery. It is to be contrasted with the law of compensation, which is the law of loss-based recovery. Obligations to make restitution and obligations to pay compensation are each a type of legal response to events in the real world. When a court...
ary remedies such as back pay and benefits may be characterized as equitable when sought from an employer, the damages here were sought from the Union. Thus, Marshall held that the plaintiffs were requesting a legal remedy, and therefore, on the balance of the issues, were entitled to have their case heard by a jury.
Brennan’s concurrence
Justice Brennan concurred, but desired to simplify the test for determining a plaintiff’s Seventh Amendment rights. Specifically, he felt that it was unnecessary to examine the nature of the action itself, but rather to simply examine the type of relief requested by the plaintiff. If the plaintiff requested a legal remedyLegal remedy
A legal remedy is the means with which a court of law, usually in the exercise of civil law jurisdiction, enforces a right, imposes a penalty, or makes some other court order to impose its will....
(such as monetary damages), Brennan would simply assume that the right to a jury trial existed, unless Congress had assigned the particular action to a non-Article III tribunal
Article I and Article III tribunals
In the United States, the American legal system includes both state courts and United States federal courts. The federal tribunals may be an Article III tribunal or another adjudicative body classified as an Article I or an Article IV tribunal...
, and a jury trial would frustrate the intent of Congress.
Brennan went on to criticize the Court’s historical analysis of traditional equitable and legal causes of action. Many of the statutory rights created by Congress are not analogous to anything which existed in the courts of 18th-century England, and judges lack the historical training to analyze such matters consistently. Different justices and historians have come to different conclusions as to what is analogous to a “legal” or “equitable” action. He concluded that the right to a jury trial was too important for the Court to allow for such an uncertainty.
Stevens’ concurrence
Justice StevensJohn Paul Stevens
John Paul Stevens served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from December 19, 1975 until his retirement on June 29, 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest member of the Court and the third-longest serving justice in the Court's history...
concurred separately, on similar grounds as Justice Brennan did. He felt that the Court’s attempt to find an 18th-century common law analogue to the collective-bargaining and fair representation actions in this case was a misguided historical judgment, and that the type of relief sought by the plaintiff was the relevant inquiry. He explained that it was perfectly rational to have members of the community—i.e. a jury of one’s peers—hear such a case.
Dissent
Justice KennedyAnthony Kennedy
Anthony McLeod Kennedy is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, having been appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Since the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, Kennedy has often been the swing vote on many of the Court's politically charged 5–4 decisions...
, with whom Justices O'Connor and Scalia joined, dissented, arguing that the majority’s analogy to an equitable trust action should have been dispositive in this case. He further argued that the relationship between the union and its workers was more similar to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary than an attorney and his client, because a union had a duty of fair representation to all of its workers and did not normally be compelled to act as an agent by one beneficiary. He also stated that the relief sought by the plaintiffs was equitable in nature, because it sought to make the plaintiffs whole, and that the majority unnecessarily separated out the legal and equitable issues in this case.
Justice Kennedy defended the historical comparison of the cause of action to the “suits at common law” available in 1791. He felt that to expand the right beyond what was available to plaintiffs at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights was nothing more than rewriting the Constitution, stating “[w]e cannot preserve a right existing in 1791 unless we look to history to identify it”. 494 U.S. at 593.
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 494
- List of United States Supreme Court cases
- Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume
- List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Rehnquist Court