R. Paul BEARD and Scarlett Beard, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CARROLLTON RAILROAD and CSX Transportation, Inc., (88-5910); The Travelers and The Travelers Companies, (88-6280), Defendants-Appellants.
Nos. 88-5910, 88-6280.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Decided Dec. 28, 1989.
Order on Denial of Rehearing March 2, 1990.
893 F.2d 117
Finally, defendant argues that the district court‘s determination that a physically and racially isolated family is more likely to be intimidated than a nonisolated one is clearly erroneous. The district court concluded that burning a cross at night in a rural area in the yard of a black family, who was living in a predominantly white community isolated from other blacks, would have a greater impact than it would in a nonrural area. Defendant contends that he and Pichler decided to burn the cross in front of the Griffins’ house because the Griffins lived in defendant‘s neighborhood and they wanted to convey a particular message—get out of this neighborhood—not because the Griffins were isolated. Defendant argues that the degree of intimidation would be the same if the Griffins were living in an integrated neighborhood or in a neighborhood that was heavily minority.
We find that the district court properly took into account the rural location of the Griffins’ residence in finding that they were particularly susceptible to the cross burning. It is of no consequence whether defendant consciously considered the Griffins’ isolation in conspiring to intimidate them.
For these reasons, the decision of the district court is affirmed.
James G. Apple, James D. Moyer (argued), Robert M. Connolly, Stites & Harbison, Louisville, Ky., John David Cole (argued), Elizabeth Y. Downing, Cole, Broderick, Minton, Moore & Thornton, Bowling Green, Ky., for defendants-appellants.
Before WELLFORD and NELSON, Circuit Judges, and TAYLOR, District Judge.*
DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from an order of remand. The action was filed originally in state court, but was removed to the federal district court as a case arising under the
Under
I
Plaintiff R. Paul Beard was employed as a laborer in the maintenance-of-way department of defendant Carrollton Railroad, a wholly owned subsidiary of defendant CSX Transportation, Inc. As an employee of the railroad, Mr. Beard had medical, hospital and life insurance coverage for himself and his dependants under a group policy issued by defendant Travelers. A collective bargaining agreement negotiated un-
The health and welfare plan in question provided, subject to certain qualifications not in question here, that an employee who was suspended or dismissed from employment would continue to be covered until the end of the fourth month following the month in which the employee last rendered compensated service. An employee who quit voluntarily, on the other hand, would lose his coverage immediately.
Mr. Beard‘s employment was terminated by the railroad on February 20, 1987. His three-year-old son died of cancer in August of that year, after heavy medical expenses had been incurred. It is alleged that the railroad lied to the insurance company about the circumstances of Mr. Beard‘s departure, falsely stating that Mr. Beard had quit voluntarily; as a result, the insurance company improperly denied responsibility for medical expenses attributable to the period between February 20 and June 30, 1987.
Mr. Beard and his wife instituted the present action in the Circuit Court of Carroll County, Kentucky, on February 25, 1988. Count one of the complaint alleged that Mr. Beard‘s employment had been terminated by the railroad, as a result of which he and his dependents were entitled to continuing insurance coverage; that the defendants maintained he had resigned voluntarily; that the plaintiffs filed claims for insurance benefits to which they were entitled; and that the defendants wrongfully failed and refused to provide the benefits contracted for. Count two of the complaint asserted that the railroad had willfully misinformed CSX and Travelers about the termination of Mr. Beard‘s employment in an effort to deprive the plaintiffs of benefits to which, as the railroad knew, they were entitled; that CSX and Travelers refused to pay the benefits in question notwithstanding that the companies were in possession of sufficient information to conclude that the plaintiffs were entitled to payment; that the defendants’ acts constituted an intentional and malicious interference with the plaintiffs’ contractual rights; and that the defendants intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon the plaintiffs. The complaint concluded with a prayer for actual and punitive damages and a demand for trial by jury on those issues so triable.
The railroad and CSX filed a timely petition for removal to federal court, asserting that the action arose under the laws of the United States and was removable under
The plaintiffs filed an opposing memorandum in which they argued that removal was improper, that their claims were not within the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal court, and that neither the
In a judgment entered on July 18, 1988, the district court dismissed count one of the complaint without prejudice and re-
The plaintiffs did not appeal the dismissal of count one, but the railroad and CSX perfected a timely appeal from the remand of count two. Travelers did not appeal within the time allowed by the rules. On September 21, 1988, however—64 days after the entry of judgment—Travelers moved the district court for an extension of time within which to file a notice of cross-appeal. There being no objection from the plaintiffs, the district court granted the motion. Travelers filed a notice of cross-appeal on October 28, 1988.
II
None of the parties questioned the timeliness of Travelers’ appeal, but we have an obligation to consider the issue sua sponte. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Wetzel, 424 U.S. 737, 740, 96 S.Ct. 1202, 1204, 47 L.Ed.2d 435 (1976). Under
Travelers cites no authority, nor has this court found any, suggesting that a district court may grant an extension of time after the statutory period for requesting such an extension has passed. “[T]he taking of an appeal within the prescribed time limits is mandatory and jurisdictional.” Budinich v. Becton Dickinson and Co., 486 U.S. 196, 108 S.Ct. 1717, 1722, 100 L.Ed.2d 178, 186 (1988). The district court was without authority to extend the period for filing a notice of appeal, and we lack jurisdiction to consider Travelers’ appeal. See Pryor v. Marshall, 711 F.2d 63, 64 (6th Cir.1983).
III
The appeal of the railroad and CSX presents a different jurisdictional issue. We have authority to decide appeals from “final decisions” of the district courts,
Our power to review remand orders by way of mandamus is circumscribed by
“An order remanding a case to the State court from which it was removed is not reviewable on appeal or otherwise, except that an order remanding a case to the State court from which it was removed pursuant to section 1443 of this title [addressing civil rights cases] shall be reviewable by appeal or otherwise.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The Supreme Court has given
It is probably appropriate to read this particular passage from Thermtron “against the circumstances of that case.” See Carnegie-Mellon Univ. v. Cohill, 484 U.S. 343, 355, 108 S.Ct. 614, 621, 98 L.Ed.2d 720, 733 (1988). The circumstances of Thermtron, as the Court repeatedly emphasized, were that a properly removed diversity case had been remanded without any statutory authority whatever. See e.g., the opening sentence of Thermtron: “The questions in this case are whether a Federal District Judge may remand a properly removed diversity case for reasons not authorized by statute, and, if not, whether such remand order may be remedied by writ of mandamus.” 423 U.S. at 337, 96 S.Ct. at 586 (Emphasis supplied). See also Id. at 351, 96 S.Ct. at 593: “Because the District Judge remanded a properly removed case on grounds that he had no authority to consider, he exceeded his statutorily defined power; and issuance of the writ of mandamus was not barred by
We find two possible statutory sources of authority for the remand order in the present case:
Section 1447(c), as in effect at the time of the remand in July of 1988, provided in part as follows:
“If at any time before final judgment it appears that the case was removed improvidently and without jurisdiction, the district court shall remand the case, and may order the payment of just costs. A certified copy of the order of remand shall be mailed by its clerk to the clerk of the State court. The State court may thereupon proceed with such case.”
We are satisfied that the instant case was not removed “improvidently and without jurisdiction,” so the remand could not have been effected under the authority of
The other statute,
“Whenever a separate and independent claim or cause of action, which would be removable if sued upon alone, is joined with one or more otherwise non-removable claims or causes of action, the entire case may be removed and the district court may determine all issues therein, or, in its discretion, may remand all matters not otherwise within its original jurisdiction.”
The district court‘s opinion suggests that the court viewed count one of the complaint as stating the claims “separate and independent” from the claims asserted in count two, but the court clearly was not purporting to exercise any discretion when it remanded count two: ignoring
IV
The
Mr. Beard argues that his tort claims do not come within the Adjustment Board‘s jurisdiction because he had left his employment with the railroad before filing suit, and thus he is not an “employee” as defined in the Act. The argument is not persuasive. The Act has been applied to a former airline pilot, even though he had filed his claim after leaving the airline‘s employ. Air Line Pilots Assoc., Int‘l v. Alaska Airlines, Inc., 735 F.2d 328, 329 (9th Cir.1984). As the Supreme Court has noted, there is no reason to insist that the claimant be an employee throughout the arbitration process, so long as “the claim itself arises out of the employment relationship which Congress regulated.” Pennsylvania R.R. v. Day, 360 U.S. 548, 551-52, 79 S.Ct. 1322, 1324-25, 3 L.Ed.2d 1422 (1959).
The pertinent question here is not whether Mr. Beard is still an employee, but whether the “action is based on a matrix of facts which are inextricably intertwined with the grievance machinery of the collective bargaining agreement and the R.L.A.” Stephens v. Norfolk & W. Ry., 792 F.2d 576, 580 (6th Cir.1986), amended, 811 F.2d 286 (6th Cir.1986).
This “inextricably intertwined” test has also been used by the Supreme Court in cases under
The standards under the two statutes may not be identical. The
In the case at bar it seems to us that adjudication of the tort claims would require interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement. The first of the tort claims is for wrongful interference with contract. This claim would require interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement because Kentucky makes breach of contract an essential element of the tort. Industrial Equipment Co. v. Emerson Elec. Co., 554 F.2d 276, 289 (6th Cir.1977).1 The second of the tort claims involves the intentional infliction of emotional distress, an area in which Kentucky follows the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 46. Craft v. Rice, 671 S.W.2d 247, 251 (Ky.1984). The Restatement provides that the actor is not liable “where he has done no more than to insist upon his legal rights in a permissible way.” Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 46, comment g. A determination of the railroad‘s “legal rights” would require the court to resort to the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement.
A different situation was presented in Farmer v. United Bhd. of Carpenters, 430 U.S. 290, 97 S.Ct. 1056, 51 L.Ed.2d 338 (1977), where a state claim for the intentional infliction of emotional distress was held not to be preempted by
“it is essential that the state tort be either unrelated to the employment discrimination or a function of the particularly abusive manner in which the discrimination is accomplished or threatened rather than as a function of the actual or threatened discrimination itself.” Id. at 305, 97 S.Ct. at 1066.
The conduct complained of in Farmer included “frequent public ridicule” and “incessant verbal abuse,” id. at 293, 97 S.Ct. at 1059. The claims in the case at bar, in contrast, turn on the availability of benefits under the collective bargaining agreement. If no benefits were due under the contract, there could be no case. The fact that the emotional distress claim seeks damages for the loss of insurance benefits further suggests that this claim is not independent of the collective bargaining contract. Mr. Beard‘s claim falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Railroad Board.
Nothing in the
The appeal of defendants The Travelers and The Travelers Companies is DISMISSED. The appeal of defendants Carrollton Railroad and CSX Transportation, Inc., is treated as a petition for a writ of mandamus, and the petition is GRANTED. The case is remanded to the district court with directions (a) to vacate the order remanding count two to the state court and (b) to dismiss count two without prejudice.
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
PER CURIAM. The appellees, R. Paul and Scarlett Beard, have petitioned for a rehearing of the decision announced by this court on December 28, 1989, in an opinion reported at 893 F.2d 117. The petition raises three points, which we shall address in turn.
1. Because Travelers’ appeal was untimely and, as we held, this court had no jurisdiction to consider it, the Beards suggest that there is confusion as to whether our direction to dismiss count two of the complaint applied as to Travelers as well as to the other defendants.
The legal issues that Travelers sought to raise on appeal were identical to those discussed in Part IV of our opinion, and the Beards have not stated an independent claim against Travelers. We assume, therefore, that the district court will dismiss the claim against Travelers.
2. Because Mrs. Beard may have claims that are not subject to the primary and exclusive jurisdiction of the Adjustment Board, the Beards suggest that her claims ought not to have been dismissed. It seems to us that dismissal of her claims would be appropriate, however, because Mrs. Beard would have no right of recovery if it is ultimately determined that her husband has none.
3. The Beards suggest that because there is no dispute among the parties concerning the proper interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement, and because the tort claims arose after the termination of Mr. Beard‘s employment, the district court‘s order remanding the state law claims to the Carroll Circuit Court ought to have been affirmed in its entirety. The
The petition for rehearing is DENIED.
