Section 25 Court

• Library: Emp-Emp Law 2000

Courts have authority to award employees actual damages rising out of the breach of the duty and, in cases where employers are also parties, to award reinstatement to employment and other seniority relief as is appropriate. See Smith v. Hussmann Refrigerator Co., 619 F.2d 1229 (8^th Cir. 1980). In International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers v. Foust, 442 U.S. 42 (1979), the Supreme Court ruled that punitive damages are not recoverable against a union in a fair representation case. The Court concluded that the potential impact on national labor policy resulting from subjecting unions to potentially huge awards of punitive damages outweighed the deterrent effect that these awards might have.

The issue of apportionment of damages in fair representation cases that involve contract interpretation and administration has been the subject of scholarly debate for many years. In Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171 (1967), the Court stated:

The governing principle . . . is to apportion liability between the employer and the union according to the damage caused by the fault of each. Thus, damages attributable solely to the employer’s breach of contract should not be charged to the union, but increases if any in those damages caused by the union’s refusal to process the grievance should not be charged to the employer.

Id. at 197–98.

In Bowen v. United States Postal Service, 459 U.S. 212 (1983), the Court again spoke on the issue of apportionment of damages, and Bowen has raised many new questions concerning this issue. In Bowen the Court reinstated an apportionment of damages made by the jury in a discharge case. The jury found the damages to be $52,954 in total and had apportioned the damages as $30,000 against the union and $22,954 against the Postal Service. The Fourth Circuit had reversed the award of damages against the union only, leaving Mr. Bowen with $22,954 when his total damages suffered were in excess of $52,000. The Court reinstated the damages apportioned against the union in the special verdict form, which read: “If compensatory damages are awarded by your answer to Question 3, state the amount, if any, that should be attributable to the defendant Union and the amount, if any, that should be attributable to the defendant Postal Service.” The majority opinion, however, did not set forth any guidelines or criteria for determining how much damage should be apportioned to the employer and how much to the union. It was left to Justice White in his dissenting...