Delgado-Biaggi v. Air Transport ( 1997 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 96-2190
ERIC DELGADO-BIAGGI, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
AIR TRANSPORT LOCAL 501, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Juan M. Perez-Gimenez, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Chief Judge,
Selya and Stahl, Circuit Judges.
John Ward Llambias for appellants.
Malcolm A. Goldstein, with whom Joel C. Glanstein, Manuel Porro-
Vizcarra, O'Donnell, Schwartz, Glanstein & Rosen, and Lopez-Lay
Vizcarra & Porro, were on brief for appellees.
May 5, 1997
STAHL, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-appellant Eric
STAHL, Circuit Judge.
Delgado-Biaggi1 brought an action against defendants-
appellees Air Transport Local 501 ("Local 501") and the
Transport Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO ("TWU")
(collectively, "the Union") under the Labor-Management
Reporting and Disclosure Act ("LMRDA"), 29 U.S.C. 401 et
seq., claiming the denial of due process and the arbitrary
and discriminatory removal of his shop steward position. The
district court granted summary judgment in favor of the
Union, from which Delgado-Biaggi now appeals. Because the
district court's failure to comply with Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 56(c) denied Delgado-Biaggi a meaningful
opportunity to oppose the Union's summary judgment motion, we
vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.
I.
I.
Background and Prior Proceedings
Background and Prior Proceedings
We recite the pertinent facts in the light most
favorable to Delgado-Biaggi, the party opposing summary
judgment. See Hachikian v. F.D.I.C., 96 F.3d 502, 504 (1st
Cir. 1996).
Delgado-Biaggi joined the Local 501 chapter of the
TWU in 1991 when he began working for American Airlines as a
baggage handler. One year later, Delgado-Biaggi was elected
1. Delgado-Biaggi's wife, Nilda Fernandez-Zayas, and their
conjugal partnership are also plaintiffs. For simplicity, we
refer only to Eric Delgado-Biaggi and his claims.
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to a union shop-steward position for the bag room, second
shift.2 In September 1993, Delgado-Biaggi bid for a first
shift position, which he obtained because of his seniority.
In October 1993, shortly after Delgado-Biaggi
changed work shifts, the chairman of Local 501 handed him a
letter from Local 501's Executive Vice-President, William
Tlasek, which purported to acknowledge Delgado-Biaggi's
"resignation" of his shop steward's position. In November
1993, Delgado-Biaggi responded to Tlasek by letter, asserting
that he had not resigned as shop steward and that he had a
right to remain in office unless he was duly removed pursuant
to Local 501's bylaws. Tlasek, in turn, responded that
Delgado-Biaggi's shift-change automatically effected his
resignation under Article VII(a) of the union bylaws, which
provides: "A Shop Steward who leaves the unit or shift he was
elected by, will continue to serve at the discretion of the
Executive Board."
Dissatisfied with that response, Delgado-Biaggi
complained again to Tlasek by letter dated January 14, 1994,
also to no avail. Not willing to concede the issue, he then
retained an attorney who, in March 1994, wrote a letter to
Local 501 claiming denial of due process in the removal of
Delgado-Biaggi as steward. The leadership of Local 501
2. Shop stewards are union representatives who personally
handle problems that their fellow employees raise concerning
management.
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remained unmoved. In April 1994, Delgado-Biaggi's counsel
attempted to appeal by letter to TWU's International
Executive Council. The Council's stated reason for rejecting
the appeal was Delgado-Biaggi's failure to personally file
the letter. Delgado-Biaggi did not resubmit his appeal, but
instead commenced this litigation in June 1994.
On June 13, 1996, after a desultory beginning to
the prosecution of this case, the district court set a trial
date of July 1, 1996. On June 17, the Union responded to the
setting of the trial date by filing a motion for summary
judgment.3 On Friday, June 28, the parties met with the
district court judge in chambers for a non-scheduled
conference. During this meeting, Delgado-Biaggi announced
his intention to oppose the Union's motion for summary
judgment with oral and documentary evidence on the following
Monday, July 1, the scheduled first day of trial.
The following Monday morning, before Delgado-Biaggi
had an opportunity to present his opposing evidence, the
parties were handed an opinion and order granting the Union's
3. We note that the Union submitted the June 17, 1996
summary judgment motion well after the court's November 1995
deadline for the filing of the dispositive motion. The court
allowed the untimely motion although, as the record reflects,
the Union did not first seek and obtain leave to file the
motion out of time. See In re San Juan Dupont Plaza Hotel
Fire Litigation, 45 F.3d 564, 566 (1st Cir. 1995) (explaining
that summary judgment proponent must obtain permission to
file motion out of time where filing deadline "had long since
passed").
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motion for summary judgment. The terse opinion stated that
"[t]he union's actions in [construing Delgado-Biaggi's shift
change as a resignation of shop stewardship] were authorized
by its by-laws, which make perfect sense, since, of course, a
shop steward is of little use if he does not work the shift
he represents." The order concluded that "none of the
union's conduct violates the rights protected under 29 U.S.C.
411." The court did not entertain oral argument on the
motion.
Thereafter, Delgado-Biaggi filed a motion to
reconsider along with a sworn declaration from Jorge
Brignoni, a former Chairman of Local 501. The declaration
stated that union stewardships are "never" withdrawn or
deemed resigned as a result of a shift change, and that
[i]t has never been the practice in
Puerto Rico to consider a change of shift
as an automatic resignation . . . . The
only case where such an interpretation
has been attempted is when Mr. Eric
Delgado was unilaterally removed by the
then Chairman Mr. Rafael Perez.
Delgado-Biaggi further submitted an excerpt from the
deposition of Jose Rodriguez, a Board member, who testified
that the Executive Board had never removed Delgado-Biaggi
from his shop steward position. The district court denied
the motion to reconsider. This appeal followed.
II.
II.
Discussion
Discussion
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On appeal, Delgado-Biaggi argues that the district
court prematurely granted summary judgment and that, given
the proper opportunity to respond to the Union's motion, he
would have produced evidence sufficient to preclude summary
judgment. The Union offers a host of arguments in favor of
upholding the court's disposition of the action and insists
that "the district court handled the case properly."
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c) provides that
a summary judgment motion "shall be served at least 10 days
before the time fixed for the hearing." Fed. R. Civ. P.
56(c). We have interpreted Rule 56(c) to allow an adverse
party at least ten days to respond to a motion for summary
judgment. See Stella v. Town of Tewksbury, 4 F.3d 53, 55
(1st Cir. 1993) ("[S]ummary judgment targets should be secure
in the knowledge that they will have at least ten days in
which to formulate and prepare their best opposition.");
Melanson v. Caribou Reefers, Ltd., 667 F.2d 213, 214 (1st
Cir. 1981). Indeed, "the purpose of Rule 56(c) is to allow a
party to have a meaningful opportunity to challenge a summary
judgment motion." Cia. Petrolera Caribe, Inc. v. Arco
Caribbean, Inc., 754 F.2d 404, 409 (1st Cir. 1985) (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted).4
4. We note that, while Rule 56(c) refers to a "hearing" in
relation to the ten day proviso, the rule does not require
oral argument in connection with the motion. See Cia.
Petrolera Caribe, 754 F.2d at 411 (explaining that the motion
may be "heard" on the papers).
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The Union filed its motion for summary judgment on
Monday, June 17, 1996. Excluding the day on which the motion
was filed as well as the intervening Saturday and Sunday, see
Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(a), the ten-day requirement afforded
Delgado-Biaggi until the end of the business day Monday, July
1, to submit his opposition. By ruling on the morning of
July 1, before Delgado-Biaggi could present his opposing
evidence, the district court denied him the requisite
opportunity to contest the motion. As we previously have
admonished, the "[ten day] notice requirement is not merely
window dressing" and the "proper province" of summary
judgment is "to weed out claims that do not warrant trial
rather than simply to clear a court's docket." Stella, 4
F.3d at 55. We find that the court erred when it granted
summary judgment before Delgado-Biaggi exhausted his
opportunity to challenge the Union's motion.5
The Union overlooks the procedural flaws
accompanying the entry of summary judgment and endeavors to
persuade us that, in any event, the record reflects no
genuine issue of material fact. In Stella, we "decline[d] to
delve into the substantive aspects of plaintiffs' cause of
action" because "leapfrogging to the merits would display
5. The error is somewhat amplified by the undisputed fact
that, during the June 28 chambers conference, Delgado-Biaggi
notified the district court that he would submit his opposing
evidence the following Monday, July 1.
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much the same disregard for established protocol that marred
the district court's performance." 4 F.3d at 55. Assuming
harmless error jurisprudence applied in such cases, we noted
that the peculiar procedural regime the district court
employed in that case thwarted any such analysis. See id. at
56 n.4.
We acknowledge that this case does not present the
extreme procedural shortcomings involved in Stella. See id.
at 54 (reversing summary judgment where, on first day of
trial, judge directed defendants to move for summary judgment
and afforded plaintiffs thirty minutes to prepare for
argument).6 The district court's failure to comply with Rule
56(c), however, necessitates that we afford Delgado-Biaggi
"every latitude to show that [the Union] was not entitled to
summary judgment." Melanson, 667 F.2d at 214. Assuming
arguendo that harmless error analysis applies to Rule 56(c)
infirmities, we cannot say that the court's noncompliance
with the ten-day notice requirement was harmless.
The sworn statements submitted with Delgado-
Biaggi's motion to reconsider comprise evidence that Local
501 never previously considered a shift-change an automatic
6. Although we construed the district court's proceedings in
Stella as involving a sua sponte grant of summary judgment,
our observations concerning Rule 56(c)'s requirements were
not limited to that summary judgment subset. See 4 F.3d at
55; see also Berkovitz v. Home Box Office, Inc., 89 F.3d 24,
29-30 (1st Cir. 1996).
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resignation of a shop steward's position and that, in any
event, the Executive Board never exercised its discretion
within the meaning of Article VII(a) to terminate Delgado-
Biaggi's stewardship. Indeed, the Union conceded at oral
argument before us that there was no evidence in the record
to establish that the Board had met to exercise its
discretion.7 This undisputed fact undermines the court's
crucial findings in its summary judgment order and
sufficiently raises the question of a genuine issue of
material fact. Thus, we cannot view the flawed proceedings
below as involving harmless error.
Furthermore, by the Union's own reasoning, its
contention that Delgado-Biaggi fails to state a claim under
the LMRDA depends on the Executive Board's powers and,
ultimately, the disputed question whether the Board met to
exercise its discretion. The Union's other arguments also
raise significant issues neither fully presented nor squarely
addressed below.8 See In re San Juan Dupont Plaza Hotel Fire
7. Without deciding the issue, we note that the language of
Article VII(a) appears to contemplate the uninterrupted
service of a shop steward who changes shifts, absent some
action by the Executive Board.
8. For example, the Union argues that Delgado-Biaggi failed
"to exhaust reasonable hearing procedures (but not to exceed
a four-month lapse of time) within [the union]" before filing
his action. 29 U.S.C. 411(a)(4). This argument
potentially requires factbound determinations regarding the
"reasonableness" of the hearing procedures and the precise
event that triggered the four month period. The district
court never reached this issue and, given the undeveloped
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Litigation, 45 F.3d 564, 567, 568 (1st Cir. 1995) (finding
harmful error where appellate court was not "completely
certain that the merits of the summary judgment issue had
been fully presented to the district court" and where "a
significant legal issue, not squarely addressed by the
district court" remained unresolved due to court's
abbreviated summary judgment proceedings). We are loath to
endorse the district court's disregard for Rule 56(c)
protocol by reaching the merits of these undeveloped matters.
See Stella, 4 F.3d at 55.
We conclude that, largely because of the absence of
evidence establishing Executive Board action, as well as the
procedural failure below, remand for further proceedings is
the appropriate solution. See In re San Juan Dupont Plaza
Hotel Fire Litigation, 45 F.3d at 568.
III.
III.
Conclusion
Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the judgment
of the district court and remand the case for proceedings
consistent with this opinion. Costs to appellants.
record, we decline to reach it at this time.
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