Lewis et al v. Cottrell, Inc.

Filing 34

MEMORANDUM. Signed by Judge William M Nickerson on 7/30/12. (bmhs, Deputy Clerk)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND

JOYCE LEWIS, et al.
v.
COTTRELL, INC.
*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Civil Action No. WMN-11-2632

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

MEMORANDUM
Pending before the Court is Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss
and/or Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, ECF No. 20, and
Plaintiffs’ Motion to Lift Stay, ECF No. 28.
motions are fully briefed.1

Both of these

Upon consideration of the pleadings,

facts and applicable law and for the reasons set forth below,
the Court determines that Plaintiffs’ Motion to Lift Stay will
be granted and Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss will be denied.
The pending case involves products liability claims brought
by the surviving family of decedent Scott Lewis against
Defendant Cottrell, Inc.

The decedent worked for Cassens

Transport Company (Cassens) as an automobile hauler and tractor
trailer driver at Cassens’ terminal located in Jessup, Maryland,

1

Plaintiffs have also filed a Motion for Leave to Supplement
Plaintiffs’ Initial Briefing on the Complete Preemption Issue,
ECF No. 30, which the Court will treat as a Motion for Leave to
File a Surreply. As the supplement presents relevant
information which could not have been presented during the
initial briefing, the Court will accept the supplement and
consider it in accordance with Local Rule 105.2(a).

and was a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters
(Teamsters).

As part of his job duties, Mr. Lewis was

responsible for loading new vehicles onto car carriers and
delivering the vehicles to various dealerships.
According to the complaint, on April 4, 2008, Mr. Lewis was
loading new vehicles onto the upper deck of a car carrier that
was designed, manufactured, and sold by Defendant.

Upon exiting

a Sports Utility Vehicle that he had loaded, Mr. Lewis fell
head-first approximately eight and a half feet from the upper
deck, sustaining serious injuries to his head, body and limbs.
Mr. Lewis was hospitalized at the University of Maryland Shock
Trauma Center and underwent a right craniotomy and right
temporal lobe washout.

On April 24, 2008, Mr. Lewis died as a

result of the injuries he sustained after the fall.
On September 14, 2011, Plaintiffs filed the present suit
based on this Court’s diversity jurisdiction, seeking damages
from Defendant for Negligence, Products Liability, and Breach of
Warranty.

ECF No. 1; see 28 U.S.C. § 1332.

On December 29,

2011, Defendant filed a Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 20, arguing
that the claims are completely preempted under Section 301 of
the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), 29 U.S.C. § 185.
Subsequently, on January 6, 2012, Defendant filed a motion to
transfer the case, along with 20 other products liability cases
currently pending against it in various United States District
2

Courts, to the Eastern District of Missouri in order to
consolidate pretrial proceedings pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407.
In all of the pending cases Defendant had filed motions to
dismiss based on preemption, an issue Defendant argued should be
decided by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation
(JPML).
Defendant filed a Motion to Stay the Case pending a
decision on the motion to transfer, which this Court granted on
February 14, 2012.

ECF No. 26.

denied the motion to transfer.

On April 17, 2012, the JPML
ECF No. 27.

As this Court’s

February 14, 2012, Order stayed the case until the JPML issued a
decision on the motion to transfer and the JPML has now issued
that decision, the Court will lift the stay and consider the
pending Motion to Dismiss.2
As stated above, Defendant argues that this case must be
dismissed because Plaintiffs’ state law claims are preempted by
Section 301 of the LMRA.

More precisely, Defendant argues that

Plaintiffs’ claims are preempted because they are intertwined
with the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to which Mr.

2

Defendant has filed an opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion to Lift
the Stay and argues that “discovery and other obligations under
the Federal Rules should be stayed pending this Court’s ruling
on the preemption issue raised in Cottrell’s Motion to Dismiss.”
ECF No. 32 at 4-6. As the Court will also rule on the Motion to
Dismiss in this memorandum, lifting of the stay will not result
in Defendant having to participate in discovery while the
preemption issue is still outstanding.
3

Lewis, as a member of the Teamsters, was a party.

The CBA

contained specific provisions governing workplace safety and
grievance procedures, which Defendant argues are implicated
because Plaintiffs’ claims essentially allege that the equipment
used in the workplace was not sufficiently safe.
Section 301 of the LMRA provides 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 over the
parties.”

29 U.S.C. § 185(a).

The Supreme Court has explained

that this provision was enacted by Congress with the goal of
promoting the creation of a body of federal common law so that
collective bargaining agreements would be uniformly interpreted
and enforced.

See Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202,

209-210 (1985) (citing Teamsters v. Lucas Four Co., 369 U.S. 95,
103 (1962)).

In view of this purpose, any suit which would

require an interpretation of the obligations assumed by the
parties to the CBA or a determination of “what legal
consequences were intended to flow from breaches of that
agreement,” must be resolved by application of the federal
common law.

Id. at 211.

As such, a state-law claim is preempted if its resolution
“depends upon the meaning of a collective-bargaining agreement,”
Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 405-406
4

(1988), or is “inextricably intertwined with consideration of
the terms of the labor contract.”
213.

Allis-Chalmers, 471 U.S. at

Moreover, the Supreme Court has explicitly stated that

even if a state-law suit asserts a right that in some way may
relate to a CBA or to the parties to the CBA, it will not
necessarily be preempted.

Id. at 211 (“Of course, not every

dispute concerning employment, or tangentially involving a
provision of a collective-bargaining agreement, is preempted by
§ 301 or other provisions of the federal labor law).

Indeed,

“[w]hen the meaning of contract terms is not the subject of
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 [through
preemption].”

Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U.S. 107, 124 (1994).

Plaintiffs seek to recover under state-law claims for
strict products liability, negligence and breach of warranty.
In support of these claims, they allege that the car carrier
from which decedent fell failed to incorporate certain safety
features, such as side railings, handrails, hand holds, or
sufficiently wide walking decks, that would have prevented his
fall, and that this deficiency rendered the car carrier
unreasonably dangerous, was a result of Defendant’s negligence,
and caused Defendant to breach the implied warranty of
merchantability.

See Compl. at 6-12.
5

Defendant argues that these claims are “really” claims for
breach of the CBA, because the deficiencies alleged by
Plaintiffs are related to an area covered by the CBA.

Defendant

asserts that the CBA expressly discusses certain features with
which equipment provided to Cassens’ employees must be equipped,
but does not require that the equipment be equipped with the
safety features that, according to Plaintiffs, the equipment
should have possessed.

Defendant argues that because of this,

resolution of the claims is inextricably intertwined with
consideration of the CBA.
The Court disagrees.

Resolution of Plaintiff’s state-law

claims will not require interpretation of the CBA between
decedent’s union and his employer.

While it is true that the

CBA specifies certain features with which carriers provided by
Cassens to its employees must be equipped, it does not create
any duties or impose any restrictions on the manner in which
Defendant designs and manufactures those carriers.

Though it is

certainly likely that Defendant considers the needs of companies
like Cassens when it designs and manufactures equipment, it
cannot rely on this consideration to escape its state law duty
to ensure that its products are reasonably safe and without
defect.3

After all, just because the CBA may not require that a

3

Of the safety features listed by Plaintiffs in their Complaint,
only one of them, “substantial non-skid surfaces,” appears to be
6

carrier be equipped, for example, with side railings, does not
mean that a carrier lacking such side railings is without defect
under state common law.

The duties underlying Plaintiffs’

claims exist independently of the CBA, so the claims will not be
preempted by Section 301.

See Lingle, 486 U.S. at 407.

As concluded by another District Court that has considered
the issue of preemption,
[t]he terms of the CBA between [decedent’s] union and
Cassens have nothing to do with resolving the issue
presented by this case, namely, whether Cottrell satisfied
its state-law duty to produce a reasonably safe product.
[Plaintiffs’] claim simply related to a CBA provision or,
more generally, to the parties to the agreement. See
Allis-Chalmers, 471 U.S. at 220. . . In short,
[Plaintiffs’] claim is not a cause of action for violation
of a CBA and, consequently, is not pre-empted by § 301.
ECF No. 30-4 (Longstreet v. Cottrell, Inc., Case No. 11-CV-1125
(S.D. Ill. Apr. 23, 2012).4

referenced specifically in the CBA, which requires that “[a]ll
vehicle walking surfaces and work areas, excluding loading
skids, shall be coated with non-skid paint or surface coating.”
See ECF No. 30-11 (Article 30 of the CBA). The CBA, however,
only specifies that the prescribed surfaces be coated with nonskid product; it does not specify what type of coating must be
used or how the coating should be applied to provide adequate
fall protection. As such, whether or not the carrier was
equipped with “substantial non-skid surfaces” is a factual
inquiry to be made independent of the CBA. See Lingle, 486 U.S.
at 407.
4

The Court notes that a number of other United States District
Courts have considered the same issue raised in the pending
motion to dismiss: whether state-law products liability claims
filed against Cottrell are preempted under Section 301.
Plaintiffs have submitted copies of the orders in fourteen of
these cases. In all fourteen orders, the Judges determined that
7

For the reasons stated above, the Motion to Lift Stay filed
by Plaintiffs will be granted and the Motion to Dismiss filed by
the Defendant will be denied.

A separate order will follow.

/s/
William M. Nickerson
Senior United States District Judge

DATED: July 30, 2012

the state-law claims were not preempted. See ECF No. 22 at 14
(listing 8 cases); ECF No. 30-11 at 6 (listing 6 cases).
8