Garvey v. Major League Baseball Players Association (February 10,
2000)
* Court: Ninth Circuit
* Employer Group: Major League Baseball Clubs
* Plaintiff’s Job Class: Baseball player
* Trial Court: Against Garvey
* Ninth Circuit Court: In favor of Garvey
* Issues: Arbitration, scope of federal court judicial review of
arbitration decisions
Garvey Facts
* In 1990, an arbitrator ruled that the Major League Baseball Clubs
had colluded to not hire free agents for the 1986, 1987, and 1988
seasons, in violation of the collective bargaining agreement with the
Major League Baseball Players Association.
* The Clubs and the Association thereafter agreed that the Clubs
would pay $280 million to be divided among the damaged players.
* In terms of individual players, the key question with respect to
whether they would get a share of the $280 million was whether a
specific offer of a contract extension had been made to the player and
later withdrawn pursuant to the Clubs’ collision scheme.
* Garvey submitted a claim for his years with the Padres.
* Garvey testified at the 1996 arbitration hearing on his claim that
the Padres’ owner in 1985 had made a specific offer of a contract
extension (an offer which the owner later withdrew).
* Although the owner at the earlier collusion arbitration denied
having made such an offer, the same owner, believe it or not, decided to
"right what I feel was a wrong" and admitted through a letter
at the Garvey arbitration that he had in 1985 made a specific offer of a
contract extension to Garvey.
* Strangely enough, Garvey in his 1988 and 1991 responses to a claim
questionnaire did not state that a specific offer had been made to him
but only stated that it "would have been reasonable" for such
an offer to have been made.
* The arbitrator rejected the owner’s about-face and decided
against Garvey.
* Garvey filed a motion to vacate the arbitration award in federal
district court under the Federal Arbitration Act; the court denied
Garvey’s motion.
Garvey Analysis
* The Ninth Circuit decided in favor of Garvey, a very, very unusual
decision that illustrates the old saw that hard facts make a bad law.
* The court noted the tremendous deference given to labor arbitration
awards by the United States Supreme Court in its 1960 Steelwork
trilogy of cases.
* The court also observed that a court will overturn a labor
arbitration award only where an arbitrator violates public policy, goes
beyond the issues presented to him or her, or, as allegedly in this
case, issues an award that does not draw its essence from the collective
bargaining agreement but instead is based on the arbitrator’s
"own brand of industrial justice" or on the arbitrator’s
"whims or biases".
* The Ninth Circuit found that the arbitrator by not believing the
owner’s pro-Garvey evidence at Garvey’s hearing, where the same
arbitrator at the earlier collusion arbitration had concluded that the
owner’s anti-Garvey testimony was a lie, was "completely
inexplicable and borders on the irrational" and was a dispensing of
the arbitrator’s "own brand of industrial justice".
* The Ninth Circuit implicitly recognized that its decision is way
out on the outer fringe by asserting that, given the allegedly unique
facts in the case, it doubts "that our decision will have any
precedential value".
Garvey Conclusion
This case shows that, if injustice seems apparent, an appellate court
will distort even the well-established principle of judicial deference
to labor arbitration decisions in order to come to what it thinks is the
right decision. The awareness on the part of LDF trustees concerning
this occasional, albeit infrequent, attitude of courts has occasionally,
albeit infrequently, influenced their decision on participant appeals.
