Munger v. Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, Inc.

JOSEPH J. MUNGER, SR, Plaintiff, v. CASCADE STEEL ROLLING MILLS, INC, Defendant.

Case No. 3:18-cv-00970-SB

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON

May 1, 2019

OPINION AND ORDER

BECKERMAN, U.S. Magistrate Judge.

Plaintiff Joseph J. Munger ("Munger") brings this action against his former employer Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, Inc. ("Cascade"), alleging claims for violations of the Family Medical Leave Act ("FMLA"), the Oregon Family Leave Act ("OFLA"), the Oregon Sick Leave Act ("OSLA"), and wrongful discharge. (ECF No. 1.)

Pending before the Court is Cascade's motion for summary judgment. (ECF No. 28.) The Court has jurisdiction over this case under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, and all parties have consented to the jurisdiction of a U.S. Magistrate Judge under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c). For the following reasons, the Court grants in part, and denies in part, Cascade's motion for summary judgment.

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BACKGROUND

For twenty-three years, Munger worked as a billet crane operator at Cascade's steel manufacturing facility in McMinnville, Oregon. (Compl. ¶¶ 4, 7-8.) Munger was a member of the United Steel, Paper and Forestry Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Worker's International Union, AFL-CIO, Local 8378 ("Union"). (Declaration of Anthony Kuchulis, Jan. 15, 2019 (hereinafter "Kuchulis Decl."), Ex. 1 at 29.)

On April 1, 2016, the Union and Cascade entered into a collective bargaining agreement ("CBA"). (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 2 at 1.) The CBA recognized the Union as the exclusive collective bargaining representative for all of Cascade's employees at the McMinnville facility. (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 2 at 1.) Under the CBA, Cascade retained the "right to hire, promote, demote, lay-off, discipline, suspend or discharge employees for just cause[.]" (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 2 at 3.) The CBA provided that "any dispute" "between the Company [Cascade] and the Union or the employees represented by the Union during the term of this Agreement . . . shall be settled in accordance with" a three-step grievance process. (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 2 at 48.)

If one party was not satisfied with the grievance process, the CBA allowed that party to request an arbitrator to settle the dispute. (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 2 at 49.) The CBA identified the scope of the arbitrator's authority as follows:

Section 28.3: Arbitration

A. . . . The arbitrator shall have the sole right to determine the rules and procedures to be followed in the conduct of the arbitration hearing, and the arbitrator shall have authority to make decisions only with respect to the grievance and issue submitted and shall have no authority to modify, add to, alter or detract from the terms of any provisions of this Agreement.

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D. The award of the arbitrator shall be final and binding on all parties.

(Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 2 at 49.)

In September 2015 and again in May 2016, Munger requested leave for a medical condition. (Compl. ¶ 9.) Cascade suspended Munger on October 26, 2015, and terminated him on June 2, 2016. (Compl. ¶ 11.)

On June 9, 2016, the Union filed a grievance on Munger's behalf, alleging that Cascade fired Munger for exercising his FMLA and OFLA rights, not for just cause. (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 8.) The parties first tried to resolve the dispute informally, but ultimately proceeded to arbitration on March 23, 2017 in accordance with the CBA. (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 1.)

During the course of the arbitration proceeding, the parties offered opening statements, witness testimony, and post-hearing briefing. (Kuchulis Decl., Exs. 1, 10.) On July 7, 2017, the arbitrator issued a written ruling, noting that the parties "stipulate that the issue presented here is whether the Company [Cascade] had 'just cause to terminate Joe Munger.'" (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 11 at 8.) The arbitrator concluded that Cascade "had just cause for [Munger's] termination, and the grievance must be dismissed." (Kuchulis Decl., Ex. 11 at 14.)

On June 1, 2018, Munger filed this case, alleging that Cascade interfered with his FMLA, OFLA, and OSLA rights, and wrongfully discharged him for taking medical leave. (ECF No. 1.) On July 5, 2018, Cascade filed a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, on the grounds that Munger lacks standing and the final and binding arbitration agreement divests the Court of subject matter jurisdiction over Munger's claims. (ECF No. 5.) On September 18, 2018, the Court denied Cascade's motion to dismiss. (ECF No. 15.) This motion followed. (ECF No. 28.)

ANALYSIS

I. STANDARD OF REVIEW

Summary judgment is appropriate where there are no genuine issues of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). On a motionfor summary judgment, courts must view the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of that party. Porter v. Cal. Dep't of Corr., 419 F.3d 885, 891 (9th Cir. 2005) (citations omitted). The court does not assess the credibility of witnesses, weigh evidence, or determine the truth of matters in dispute. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249 (1986). "Where the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no 'genuine issue for trial.'" Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986) (citation omitted).

II. DISCUSSION

Cascade seeks summary judgment on all of Munger's claims on the ground that principles of issue preclusion, claim preclusion, and waiver bar Munger from relitigating the same issues the arbitrator already resolved. (Def.'s Mot. at 2.) The Court first addresses whether the arbitrator's decision precludes Munger from asserting his statutory claims in federal court.

A. Statutory Claims

Cascade is correct that an "arbitration decision can have res judicata or collateral estoppel effect[.]" Clark v. Bear Stearns & Co., Inc., 966 F.2d 1318, 1321 (9th Cir. 1992) (citation omitted). However, the Supreme Court has made clear that an adverse arbitration decision on an employee's contract-based claims arising from a collective bargaining agreement does not preclude an employee from relitigating his statutory claims in federal court. See Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36 (1974).

In Gardner-Denver, the defendant terminated an employee subject to a collective bargaining agreement. The employee then filed a grievance with his union, claiming that he was "unjustly discharged" in violation of the "just cause" provision of the collective bargaining agreement. Gardner-Denver, 415 U.S. at 39. The employee's grievance went to arbitration, and during the arbitration hearing, the plaintiff "testified that his discharge was the result of racialdiscrimination[.]" Id. at 42. The arbitrator ultimately ruled that the employee "had been discharged for just cause" and "made no reference to" the employee's "claim of racial discrimination." Id.

After receiving a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the employee sued his former employer in federal court for race discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Id. The district court granted, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed, summary judgment for the employer because "the claim of racial discrimination had been submitted to the arbitrator and resolved adversely to" the employee, thereby precluding the employee from asserting a Title VII claim in federal court. Id. at 43.

On appeal, the Supreme Court reversed. The Court explained that the adverse arbitration decision did not preclude the employee from relitigating his statutory claims because an employee's contractual rights under a collective bargaining agreement are legally distinct from an employee's statutory rights:

In submitting his grievance to arbitration, an employee seeks to vindicate his contractual right under a collective-bargaining agreement. By contrast, in filing a lawsuit under Title VII, an employee asserts independent statutory rights accorded by Congress. The distinctly separate nature of these contractual rights is not vitiated merely because both were violated as a result of the same factual occurrence. And certainly no inconsistency results from permitting both rights to be enforced in their respectively appropriate forums.

Id. at 49-50.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court held that an employee does not waive his statutory rights through "mere resort to the arbitral forum to enforce contractual rights" because "the arbitrator has authority to resolve only questions of contractual rights, and this authority remains regardless of whether certain contractual rights are similar to, or duplicative of, the substantiverights secured by Title VII." Id. at 53-54.¹ The Court based its holding, in part, on its skepticism about the adequacy of arbitration proceedings in general: "[t]he record of the arbitration proceedings is not as complete; the usual rules of evidence do not apply; and rights and procedures common to civil trials, such as discovery, compulsory process, cross-examination, and testimony under oath, are often severely limited or unavailable." Id. at 57-58.

Cascade is correct that subsequent Supreme Court decisions have retreated from Gardner-Denver's skepticism about arbitration as an appropriate forum to resolve statutory claims. First, in Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., the Court upheld a compulsory arbitration provision in a non-collective bargaining agreement that required the plaintiff to arbitrate his claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. 500 U.S. 20 (1991). The Court explained that Gardner-Denver's "view that arbitration was inferior to the judicial process for resolving statutory claims" "has been undermined by our recent arbitration decisions." Gilmer, 500 U.S. at 34 n.5. Seven years later, in Wright v. Universal Maritime Service Corp., the Court assumed without deciding that a collective bargaining agreement's arbitration clause may preclude an employee's...