1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East v. Civista Medical Center, Inc., No. 8:2010cv00479 - Document 11 (D. Md. 2011)
Court Description: MEMORANDUM OPINION. Signed by Chief Judge Deborah K. Chasanow on 1/28/11. (sat, Chambers)
Download PDF
<![CDATA[
1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East v. Civista Medical Center, Inc. Doc. 11 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND : 1199 SEIU UNITED HEALTHCARE WORKERS EAST v. : : Civil Action No. DKC 10-0479 : CIVISTA MEDICAL CENTER, INC. : MEMORANDUM OPINION Presently pending and ready for review in this action to confirm an arbitration award is the motion of Defendant Civista Medical Center to dismiss. (ECF No. 7). The issues are fully briefed, and the court now rules pursuant to Local Rule 105.6, no hearing being deemed necessary. For the reasons that follow, Defendant’s motion will be granted. I. Background Plaintiff, (“Union”), is 1199 a SEIU labor United Healthcare organization that is Workers the East exclusive collective bargaining representative for a unit of approximately 200 Registered Nurses (“Nurses”) employed Civista Medical Center, Inc. (“Civista”). Civista is a Maryland corporation hospital in La Plata, Maryland. that by the Defendant, (ECF No. 1 ¶ 1). owns (Id. at ¶ 2). and operates a Civista and the Union are parties to a collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) that covers the terms and conditions of employment for the Dockets.Justia.com Nurses in the Union at Civista’s hospital. (Id. at ¶ 3). The CBA provides for final and binding arbitration of grievances between the parties. (Id. at ¶ 6)(referencing Exhibit 1A, CBA Articles 13 and 14). In March 2009, the parties arbitrated a grievance filed by the Union before Arbitrator Robert A. Creo. (Id. at 7). March 2, actions Mr. Creo issued a written opinion and award dated 2009. that the monetary award. (Id.) The award parties should enumerated take but nine did not specific include a (Id., Exhibit 2, at 29-30). On March 1, 2010, the Union filed a petition for an order confirming the arbitration award in federal district court pursuant to Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”), 29 U.S.C. § 185 (2010). (ECF No. 1). 2010, to Civista filed a motion dismiss pursuant Fed.R.Civ.P.12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. II. On April 5, to (ECF No. 7). Motion to Dismiss A. Analysis Defendant argues that the complaint should be dismissed because there is no dispute between the parties that would be resolved by confirming the arbitration award. 2). (ECF No. 7, at Defendant contends that because Plaintiff is not seeking to collect a because of monetary intervention. award or non-compliance, (Id. at otherwise there 3-4). is to no Plaintiff 2 enforce basis for counters the award judicial that the statutory scheme of the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) provides for a streamlined confirmation process that does not include a threshold factual showing of an underlying dispute between the parties subject to an arbitration award. (ECF No. 9, at 7). Plaintiff the further mandatory maintains one-year that statute because of FAA limitations contains for a seeking confirmation of an arbitration award it had to bring the suit now or it would forfeit its right to confirmation. (Id. at 2- 5). General principles of federal court jurisdiction and the law specific to confirmation of arbitral awards are relevant to the outcome Constitution, of Defendant’s the judicial motion. power In of Article the federal restricted to “cases” and “controversies.” § 2. III of courts the is U.S. Const. art III, To satisfy the case or controversy requirement, among other things, “a federal court must be presented with opposing parties representing adverse interests.” 1 Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1.15 (2010). In addition, “should the decide doctrine only of existing ripeness dictates substantial hypothetical questions and possibilities.” that courts controversies, not Id. § 1.16; see also Miller v. Brown, 462 F.3d 312, 318-19 (4th Cir. 2006)(internal marks omitted)(“The doctrine of 3 ripeness prevents judicial consideration of issues until a controversy is presented in clean-cut and concrete form.”). In contrast to the well-established principles of the case or controversy requirement, the rules governing confirmation and enforcement of arbitration awards between labor organizations and management are somewhat murky. The Federal Arbitration Act does not apply directly to labor contracts under § 301 of the Labor-Management Relations Act. U.S. 29, 40 n.9 (1987). for guidance in See Paperworkers v. Misco, 474 While courts frequently turn to the FAA making rulings relating to arbitration provisions in agreements between labor and management, they are not bound by its terms. Instead, the Supreme Court has held that section 301 itself provides a body of federal substantive law. Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U.S. 448, 456 (1957)(“We conclude that the substantive law to apply in suits under § 301(a) is federal law, which the courts must laws.”). fashion Thus, from the the FAA’s policy section of our providing national for automatic confirmation does not mandate the result Plaintiff seeks.1 1 9 U.S.C. § 9 provides: If the parties in their agreement have agreed that a judgment of the court shall be entered upon the award made pursuant to the arbitration, and shall specify the court, then at any time within one year after the 4 labor Indeed, several courts have denied requests to confirm arbitration awards between labor and management where there was no live and actual dispute between the parties. See, e.g., Derwin v. Gen. Dynamics Corp., 719 F.2d 484 (1st Cir. 1983); Steris Corp. v. Int’l Union, United Auto., Aerospace, and Agric. Implement Workers of Am., 489 F.Supp.2d 501 (W.D.Pa. 2007); Local 2414 of the United Mine Workers of Am. v. Consol. Coal Co., 682 F.Supp. 399 (S.D.Ill. 1988). States Court district of court’s Appeals for dismissal confirmation of an award. the of a In Derwin, the United First Circuit union’s reviewed application Derwin, 719 F.2d at 485. a for Neither party had challenged the arbitration award at issue, which set forth certain mandatory actions for the parties but did not include a money judgment. Id. at 486. The First Circuit held that confirmation of the award was not warranted because the union was not seeking resolution of a concrete dispute, “rather the court [was] simply being asked to put its imprimatur upon an award is made any party to the arbitration may apply to the court so specified for an order confirming the award, and thereupon the court must grant such an order unless the award is vacated, modified, or corrected as prescribed in sections 10 and 11 of this title. If no court is specified in the agreement of the parties, then such application may be made to the United States court in and for the district within which such award was made. 5 arbitral award in a vacuum.” Id. at 490. The First Circuit had determined that the FAA one year statute of limitations did not apply to actions seeking confirmation of arbitral awards between labor and management and thus determined that the better approach would be for the parties to seek confirmation if and when an actual dispute arose in the future. Id. at 491-493. The Derwin court further stated: The federal substantive law subsumes the prudential values of Article III, which militate against ministerial confirmation of awards in the absence of a concrete dispute. Moreover, the reliance on arbitration to settle labor disputes is a central policy of federal labor law. To grant the requested confirmation at this juncture would risk injecting the courts improperly into the arbitration process, since absent a concrete dispute there is no way for the district court to know whether there is any matter which it can properly review and its order may merely serve to skew the bargaining balance between the parties. Id. at 492. Following District of this logic, Illinois a district likewise denied court a in union’s the Southern request to confirm an arbitration award where neither party had contended that the awards were invalid or asserted noncompliance. Local 2414 of United Mine Workers of America, 682 F.Supp. at 399. Similarly, in Steris Corp. a district court in the Western District of Pennsylvania held that in the absence of allegations that defendants had refused to 6 comply with the arbitration award, plaintiff could not show that it had suffered an injury, and there was intervention. no controversy that required judicial 489 F.Supp.2d at 515. Still in other districts, courts have declined to follow the ruling in Derwin and have confirmed arbitration awards even where there was applicability or not meaning a current of the live award. dispute See about e.g., the National Football League Players Assoc. v. National Football League Mgmt. Council, No. 08 Civ. 3658(PAC), 2009 WL 855946 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 26, 2009); Ono Pharmaceutical Co. v. Cortech Inc., Civ.5840 SAS, 2003 WL 22481379 (S.D.N.Y. 2003). Football League Players Association, the court No. 03 In National confirmed an arbitration award where there was no dispute about it, but the court’s ruling was based in part on the fact that the award in question would not take effect until 2010 and New York State law imposed a one year statute of limitations on motions to confirm arbitral awards. An 2009 WL 855946 at *3-4. additional consideration then is whether a one-year statute of limitations applies to requests for confirmation of arbitration awards such that the Union could be prejudiced if the court dismissed the case and a dispute arose in the future regarding the award. In many circuits, courts look not to the FAA but to state statutes for the relevant statute of limitation in cases under § 301. See San Diego Cnty. Dist. Council of 7 Carpenters v. G.L. Cory, Inc., 685 F.2d 1137, 1141 (9th Cir. 1982)(applying state statute of limitations to action to vacate rather than FAA time period); Edwards v. Sea-Land Serv., Inc., 678 F.2d 1276, 1291 (5th Cir. 1982)(same); Derwin, 719 F.2d at 487-88. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has followed this approach and in the context of an action to vacate an arbitral award stated: Congress has not provided for a limitations’ period for actions under § 301 to vacate an arbitration award, and has specifically excluded the application of the United States Arbitration Act to actions concerning such collective bargaining agreements. Thus, given that Congress has not provided otherwise, we look to the law of Maryland to determine the appropriate limitations’ period. Sine v. Local No. 992 Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters, 644 F.2d 997, 1002 (4th Cir. 1981). Under Maryland law there is a 30 day statute of limitations for motions to vacate arbitral awards, Md. Code Ann., Courts and Judicial Proceedings, § 3-224 (2010), but the Maryland Code does not include a statute of limitations for actions to confirm arbitral awards. The Union argues that the FAA’s one-year statute of limitations for confirmation of arbitral awards applies to the case. (ECF reasons. No. 9 ¶ 5). The Union’s argument fails for two First, the Fourth Circuit has not interpreted § 9 of the FAA as creating a mandatory one-year statute of limitations 8 period for actions seeking confirmation of arbitral awards. See Sverdrup Corp. v. WHC Constructors, Inc., 989 F.2d 148, 150-56 (4th Cir. 1993). The Fourth Circuit interpreted the language to permit actions filed after the one-year period had passed. Id. While for a subsequent district court case in 2005 called reexamination of the Fourth Circuit’s position in light of other circuits’ interpretation that the FAA one-year limitation period was mandatory, see Maryland Transit Admin. V. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp., 372 F.Supp.2d 478, 483 (D.Md. 2005), it remains the law in this circuit. More importantly, and as discussed above, the FAA does not control labor contracts under § 301. Thus, even if the law of this circuit imposed a one-year statute of limitations period for actions to confirm arbitration awards, courts would not be bound to apply that statute of limitations to cases such as this one. At present there is no live controversy or dispute between the parties regarding the arbitral award. The Union’s argument that it may be unable to seek confirmation at a later date if a dispute arises rests on hypotheticals and prognostication; the Fourth Circuit would have to change its interpretation of the FAA with respect to the statute of limitations for confirmation of awards, and decide to apply the FAA statute of limitations period in this context. Accordingly there is no basis for the 9 court to take action to confirm the award and the motion to dismiss will be granted. III. Conclusion For the foregoing reasons, Civista’s motion to dismiss will be granted. A separate Order will follow. /s/ DEBORAH K. CHASANOW United States District Judge 10
]]>
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You
should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google
Privacy Policy and
Terms of Service apply.
