United States District Court, C.D. California
Present: The Honorable PERCY ANDERSON, UNITED STATES DISTRICT
JUDGE
CIVIL MINUTES - GENERAL
Proceedings:
IN CHAMBERS - COURT ORDER
Before
the Court is a Notice of Removal filed by defendant Costco
Wholesale Corporation (“Defendant”). (Docket No.
1.) Defendant asserts that the Court has federal question
jurisdiction over this action, which is brought by plaintiff
Kris De Nava (“Plaintiff”). See 28
U.S.C. § 1331. Plaintiff originally commenced this
action in the Superior Court of California for the County of
Los Angeles on May 9, 2019 against Costco Wholesale
Management. (Docket No. 1, Decl. of Matthew S. McConnell, Ex.
A.) Plaintiff served Defendant with a copy of the First
Amended Complaint and Amended Summons, naming the correct
Defendant, on October 1, 2019. (Id. at ¶ 4.)
Federal
courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, having subject
matter jurisdiction only over matters authorized by the
Constitution and Congress. See Kokkonen v. Guardian Life
Ins. Co., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). A suit filed in
state court may be removed to federal court if the federal
court would have had original jurisdiction over the suit. 28
U.S.C. § 1441(a). “The removal statute is strictly
construed against removal jurisdiction, and the burden of
establishing federal jurisdiction falls to the party invoking
the statute.” California ex rel. Lockyer v. Dynegy,
Inc., 375 F.3d 831, 838 (9th Cir. 2004) (citing
Ethridge v. Harbor House Rest., 861 F.2d 1389, 1393
(9th Cir. 1988)). “Federal jurisdiction must be
rejected if there is any doubt as to the right of removal in
the first instance.” Gaus v. Miles, Inc., 980
F.2d 564, 566 (9th Cir. 1992).
Under
28 U.S.C. § 1331, this Court has original jurisdiction
over civil actions “arising under” federal law.
Removal based on § 1331 is governed by the
“well-pleaded complaint” rule. Caterpillar,
Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 392 (1987). Under the
rule, “federal jurisdiction exists only when a federal
question is presented on the face of a plaintiff's
properly pleaded complaint.” Id. at 392. If
the complaint does not specify whether a claim is based on
federal or state law, it is a claim “arising
under” federal law only if it is “clear”
that it raises a federal question. Duncan v.
Stuetzle, 76 F.3d 1480, 1485 (9th Cir. 1996). Thus, the
plaintiff is generally the “master of the claim.”
Caterpillar, 482 U.S. at 392. The only exception to
this rule is where a plaintiff's federal claim has been
disguised by “artful pleading, ” such as where
the only claim is a federal one or is a state claim preempted
by federal law. Sullivan v. First Affiliated Sec.,
Inc., 813 F.2d 1368, 1372 (9th Cir. 1987).
Defendant
contends that the Court has federal question jurisdiction
because this action arises under section 301 of the Labor
Management Relations Act (“LMRA”). (Docket No.
1.) Section 301 of the LMRA states that “[s]uits for
violation of contracts between an employer and a labor
organization representing employees . . . may be brought in
any district court of the United States having jurisdiction
of the parties . . . .” 29 U.S.C. § 185(a). The
Supreme Court has interpreted section 301 to require claims
“alleging a violation of a provision of a labor
contract [to] be brought under § 301 and be resolved by
reference to federal law.” Allis-Chalmers Corp. v.
Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 210 (1985). This preemption of
state claims “extend[s] beyond suits alleging contract
violations” to those requiring interpretation of the
provisions of labor agreements:
[Q]uestions relating to what the parties to a labor agreement
agreed, and what legal consequences were intended to flow
from breaches of that agreement, must be resolved by
references to uniform federal law, whether such questions
arise in the context of a suit for breach of contract or in a
suit alleging liability in tort. Any other result would
elevate form over substance and allow parties to evade the
requirements of § 301 by relabeling their contract
claims as claims for tortious breach of contract.
Id. at 210-11. However, the scope of section 301
preemption is not absolute:
[N]ot every dispute concerning employment, or tangentially
involving a provision of a collective-bargaining agreement,
is pre-empted by § 301 or other provisions of the
federal labor law. . . . Clearly, § 301 does not grant
the parties to a collective-bargaining agreement the ability
to contract for what is illegal under state law. In extending
the pre-emptive effect of § 301 beyond suits for breach
of contract, it would be inconsistent with congressional
intent under that section to preempt state rules that
proscribe conduct, or establish rights and obligations,
independent of a labor contract.
Id. at 211-12. “In order to help preserve
state authority in areas involving minimum labor standards,
the Supreme Court has distinguished between claims that
require interpretation or construction of a labor agreement
and those that require a court simply to ‘look at'
the agreement.” Balcorta v. Twentieth Century-Fox
Film Corp., 208 F.3d 1102, 1108 (9th Cir. 2000) (citing
Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U.S. 107, 123-26 (1994)).
In particular, “when the meaning of contract terms is
not subject to dispute, the bare fact that a
collective-bargaining agreement will be consulted in the
course of state-law litigation plainly does not require the
claim to be extinguished.” Livadas, 512 U.S.
at 124 (citing Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef,
Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 413 n.12 (1988)).
“[E]ven
if dispute resolution pursuant to a collective-bargaining
agreement, on one hand, and state law, on the other, would
require addressing precisely the same set of facts, as long
as the state-law claim can be resolved without interpreting
the agreement itself, the claim is ‘independent' of
the agreement for § 301 preemption purposes.”
Lingle, 486 U.S. at 409-10. Accordingly, preemption
under section 301 requires a two-step analysis. Alaska
Airlines Inc. v. Schurke, 898 F.3d 904, 920-22 (9th Cir.
2018) (en banc); Burnside v. Kiewit Pac. Corp., 491
F.3d 1053, 1059-60 (9th Cir. 2007).
First,
the Court must determine “whether the asserted cause of
action involves a right conferred upon an employee by virtue
of state law, not by a collective-bargaining
agreement.” Burnside, 491 F.3d at 1059.
“If a claim arises entirely from a right or duty of the
[collective-bargaining agreement (‘CBA')]-for
example, a claim for violation of the labor agreement,
whether sounding in contract or in tort-it is, in effect, a
CBA dispute in state law garb, and is preempted. In such
cases, the CBA is the ‘only source' of the right
the plaintiff seeks to vindicate.” Alaska
Airlines, 898 F.3d at 921 (footnote, citations, and
internal quotation marks omitted). “[C]laims are not
simply CBA disputes by another name, and so are not preempted
under this first step, if they just refer to a CBA-defined
right; rely in part on a CBA's terms of employment; run
parallel to a CBA violation; or invite use of the CBA as a
defense.” Id. (citations omitted).
Second,
if the right asserted by the plaintiff is conferred by state
law, the Court must determine whether the plaintiff's
claim is nevertheless “substantially dependent on
analysis of a collective bargaining agreement.”
Burnside, 491 F.3d at 1059 (quoting
Caterpillar, 482 U.S. at 394). If the claim requires
the court to “interpret, ” rather than merely
“look to, ” the CBA, then the claim is
substantially dependent thereon and is preempted by section
301. Id. at 1060. “The plaintiff's claim
is the touchstone for this analysis; the need to interpret
the collective-bargaining agreement must inhere in the nature
of the plaintiff's claim.” Detabali v. St.
Luke's Hosp., 482 F.3d 1199, 1203 (9th Cir. 2007)
(alteration omitted) (quoting Cramer v. Consol.
Freightways, Inc., 255 F.3d 683, 691 (9th Cir. 2001) (en
banc)). “[It is not] enough that resolving the state
law claim requires a court to refer to the CBA and apply its
plain or undisputed language-for example, to discern that
none of its terms is reasonably in dispute; to identify
bargained-for wage rates in computing a penalty; or to
determine whether the CBA contains a clear and unmistakable
waiver of state law rights.” Alaska Airlines,
898 F.3d at 921-22 (alterations, citations, and internal
quotation marks omitted).
The
primary focus of Plaintiff's Complaint is that Defendant
fired Plaintiff based on Defendant's miscalculation of
the number of Plaintiff's absences, and failed to treat
all employees equally. (Docket No. 1-8.) Plaintiffs assert
the following claims: (1) breach of contract, (2) breach of
implied-in-fact employment contract, (3) breach of the
implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, (4) breach
of duty of fair representation, and (5) intentional
misrepresentation. (Id. at ¶¶ 27-81.)
Defendant states in a conclusory fashion that Plaintiff's
state law claims will “require the interpretation of
the CBA, ” but Defendant does not state what, if any,
provisions of the CBA the Court will be required to
interpret. (Docket No. 1 at 3.) Defendant has failed to
persuade the Court that anything more than “look[ing]
at” the CBA would be required to resolve whether
Plaintiff was wrongfully terminated. Although reference to
the terms of an agreement may be necessary, legal
interpretation of those terms is unlikely to be even a
marginal aspect of this case. Cf. Ramirez v. Fox
Television Station, 998 F.2d 743, 749 (9th Cir. 1993)
(“[R]eference to or consideration of the terms of a
collective-bargaining agreement is not the equivalent of
interpreting the meaning of the terms.”); see also
Burnside, 491 F.3d at 74 (“The basic ...