ROADWAY EXPRESS, INC. v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
ROADWAY EXPRESS, INC., Petitioner,
v.
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.
AMADEO BIANCHI, Intervenor.
No. 10-12445.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
May 27, 2011.
Before DUBINA, Chief Judge, EDMONDSON and WILSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Roadway Express, Inc. (“Roadway”) and International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 769 (“union”) petition for review of a final National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) ruling. Because we conclude that (1) issue preclusion does not bar the General Counsel of the NLRB (“General Counsel”) from pursuing a claim against Roadway, and (2) substantial evidence supports the NLRB’s conclusions that the union breached its duty of fair representation (“DFR”) towards Amadeo Bianchi and that Roadway violated section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1), by discharging Bianchi, we deny appellants’ petitions for review.
BACKGROUND
In October 2001, Gerome Daniels, a former Roadway employee, was admitted into a hospital after he experienced chest pain while unloading a Roadway trailer. A few days later Daniels informed his union steward, Bianchi, that he had been injured at work. Bianchi helped Daniels file an injury claim. After investigation of the claim, Roadway discharged Bianchi because it believed he assisted Daniels in filing a fraudulent worker’s compensation claim.
Daniels and Bianchi grieved their discharges in union arbitration hearings; both were represented by union agent Donald Marr. Marr and Bianchi were long-standing political rivals within the union, having run against each other for office six times and having twice appeared before a union master to settle campaign disputes. Notwithstanding their apparent enmity, when at the end of the arbitration hearing the committee asked Bianchi whether the union had represented him properly and fully, Bianchi answered in the affirmative. Bianchi states in his briefs on appeal that he did so because he wanted to return to work without further delay. Without stating its reasoning, the arbitration committee denied both Daniels’s and Bianchi’s grievances and upheld their discharges from Roadway.
Bianchi then filed unfair labor practices claims against Roadway and the union in a private lawsuit before a federal district court. The jury found in favor of Bianchi on his DFR claim,1 but this Court reversed, granting Roadway’s motion for judgment as a matter of law. See Bianchi v. Roadway Exp., Inc., 441 F.3d 1278, 1279 (11th Cir. 2006) (per curiam). We reasoned that Bianchi had waived any claim that Marr represented him in bad faith by failing to raise it before the arbitration committee.
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