Opinion
No. CV 106007440S
October 14, 2010
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
The plaintiff is the bargaining agent for the Federation of Technical College Teachers, Local 1942, AFT Connecticut AFL-CIO (the Union). Pending before the court are the union's application to vacate an arbitration award issued in favor of the defendant, Board of Trustees, Connecticut Community-Technical Colleges (Board of Trustees), on December 30, 2009, pursuant to General Statutes § 52-418 and the defendant's cross-application to confirm the award pursuant to General Statutes §§ 52-417 and 52-420. At the time that the underlying dispute arose, the Union and the Board of Trustees were parties to a written collective bargaining agreement which provided for grievance arbitration and controls the arbitration award at stake in the present action. The substance of the grievance consisted of a disagreement in the interpretation of several terms contained within the collective bargaining agreement.
Specifically, the question of interpretation is whether workload limitations providing "two consecutive days off in each week, at least one of which must be a Saturday or Sunday" restricts the defendant's ability to require affected employees to "attend and participate in commencement ceremonies, unless excused by the President, wearing academic garb when required," absent providing additional compensation time.
The opposing applications arise from an award of arbitrator Robert M. O'Brien, Esq., denying the plaintiff's grievance with respect to the following submitted issue:
Did the Board of Trustees violate the 2007-2010 Collective Bargaining Agreement with AFT Local 1942 when Counselors and Librarians attended and participated in commencement at Three Rivers Community College on Sunday, May 18, 2008, without receiving additional compensation or compensatory time?
The arbitrator, following a formal hearing and the submission of testimonial and documentary evidence and post-hearing briefs issued a written award on or about December 30, 2009, which denied the grievance. The following award, in relevant part, was entered:
The Board of Trustees did not violate the 2007-2010 Collective Bargaining Agreement with AFT Local 1942 when Counselors and Librarians attended and participated in commencement ceremonies at Three Rivers Community College on Sunday, May 18, 2008 without receiving additional compensation or compensatory time. The grievance is denied as a result.
On January 26, 2010, the plaintiff filed an application, pursuant to General Statutes § 52-418, to vacate the subject arbitration award on the ground that the arbitrator exceeded his powers or so imperfectly executed them that a mutual, final and definite award upon the subject matter submitted was not made. In its memorandum of law in support of the plaintiff's motion to vacate, the plaintiff claims that the arbitrator's award substantially alters and amends the existing language in the parties' collective bargaining agreement in that it fails to draw its essence from the collective bargaining agreement and that the arbitrator ignored the plain language of the collective bargaining agreement in arriving at the award in question. The defendant, in its opposition memorandum, contends that the plaintiff's application should be dismissed on the ground that, based on the standard of review available to the court, the plaintiff has not articulated a valid justification for the court to vacate the arbitration award. Moreover, even if a valid justification to vacate the arbitration award has been made, the defendant contends that the interpretation made by the arbitrator does not meet the standard set forth in General Statutes § 52-418(a) for vacating the award.
General Statutes § 52-418 provides, in relevant part: "Vacating award. (a) Upon the application of any party to an arbitration, the superior court for the judicial district in which one of the parties resides or, in a controversy concerning land, for the judicial district in which the land is situated or, when the court is not in session, any judge thereof, shall make an order vacating the award if it finds any of the following defects: (1) If the award has been procured by corruption, fraud or undue means; (2) if there has been evident partiality or corruption on the part of any arbitrator; (3) if the arbitrators have been guilty of misconduct in refusing to postpone the hearing upon sufficient cause shown or in refusing to hear evidence pertinent and material to the controversy or of any other action by which the rights of any party have been prejudiced; or (4) if the arbitrators have exceeded their powers or so imperfectly executed them that a mutual, final and definite award upon the subject matter submitted was not made.
I. SCOPE OF REVIEW
"[Our Supreme Court] has for many years wholeheartedly endorsed arbitration as an effective alternative method of settling disputes intended to avoid the formalities, delay, expense and vexation of ordinary litigation . . . When arbitration is created by contract, [our Supreme Court] recognize[s] that its autonomy can only be preserved by minimal judicial intervention . . . Because the parties themselves, by virtue of the submission, frame the issues to be resolved and define the scope of the arbitrator's powers, the parties are generally bound by the resulting award . . . Since the parties consent to arbitration, and have full control over the issues to be arbitrated, a court will make every reasonable presumption in favor of the arbitration award and the arbitrator's acts and proceedings . . . The party challenging the award bears the burden of producing evidence sufficient to invalidate or avoid it . . . [Courts] have . . . recognized three grounds for vacating an arbitrator's award: (1) the award rules on the constitutionality of a statute . . . (2) the award violates clear public policy . . . or (3) the award contravenes one or more of the statutory proscriptions of § 52-418 . . ." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Bridgeport v. Kasper Group, Inc., 278 Conn. 466, 473-74, 899 A.2d 523 (2006).
"Arbitrators are accorded substantial discretion in determining the admissibility of evidence, particularly in the case of an unrestricted submission, which relieves the arbitrators of the obligation to follow strict rules of law and evidence in reaching their decision . . . Indeed, it is within the broad discretion of arbitrators to decide whether additional evidence is required or would merely prolong the proceedings unnecessarily . . . This relaxation of strict evidentiary rules is both necessary and desirable because arbitration is an informal proceeding designed, in part, to avoid the complexities of litigation. Moreover, arbitrators generally are laypersons who bring to these proceedings their technical expertise and professional skills, but who are not expected to have extensive knowledge of substantive law or the subtleties of evidentiary rules . . ." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 474-75.
"Judicial review of arbitral decisions is narrowly confined . . . When the parties agree to arbitration and establish the authority of the arbitrator through the terms of their submission, the extent of our judicial review of the award is delineated by the scope of the parties' agreement . . . When the scope of the submission is unrestricted, the resulting award is not subject to de novo review even for errors of law so long as the award conforms to the submission . . . Because we favor arbitration as a means of settling private disputes, we undertake judicial review of arbitration awards in a manner designed to minimize interference with an efficient and economical system of alternative dispute resolution . . . Where the submission does not otherwise state, the arbitrators are empowered to decide factual and legal questions and an award cannot be vacated on the grounds that . . . the interpretation of the agreement by the arbitrators was erroneous. Courts will not review the evidence nor, where the submission is unrestricted, will they review the arbitrators' decision of the legal questions involved . . . In other words, under an unrestricted submission, the arbitrators' decision is considered final and binding; thus the courts will not review the evidence considered by the arbitrators nor will they review the award for errors of law or fact." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) McCann v. Dept. of Environmental Protection, 288 Conn. 203, 213-14, 952 A.2d 43 (2008) (quoting Harty v. Cantor Fitzgerald Co., 275 Conn. 72, 80, 881 A.2d 139 (2005)).
"The resulting award can be reviewed, however, to determine if the award conforms to the submission . . . Such a limited scope of judicial review is warranted given the fact that the parties voluntarily bargained for the decision of the arbitrator and, as such, the parties are presumed to have assumed the risks of and waived objections to that decision . . . It is clear that a party cannot object to an award which accomplishes precisely what the arbitrators were authorized to do merely because that party dislikes the results . . . The significance, therefore, of a determination that an arbitration submission was unrestricted or restricted is not to determine what the arbitrators are obligated to do, but to determine the scope of judicial review of what they have done. Put another way, the submission tells the arbitrators what they are obligated to decide. The determination by a court of whether the submission was restricted or unrestricted tells the court what its scope of review is regarding the arbitrators' decision." (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Industrial Risk Insurers v. Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Ins. Co., 273 Conn. 86, 93-94, 868 A.2d 47 (2004).
Moreover, "[e]ven in the case of an unrestricted submission, [our Supreme Court has] . . . recognized three grounds for vacating an award: (1) the award rules on the constitutionality of a statute . . . (2) the award violates clear public policy . . . and (3) the award contravenes one or more of the statutory proscriptions of § 52-418 . . . General Statutes § 52-418(a)(4) provides that an arbitration award shall be vacated if `the arbitrators have exceeded their powers or so imperfectly executed them that a mutual, final and definite award upon the subject matter submitted was not made.' In [considering the] . . . construction of § 52-418(a)(4), [our Supreme Court has], as a general matter, looked to a comparison of the award with the submission to determine whether the arbitrators have exceeded their powers . . . [Courts have] also recognized, however, that an arbitrator's egregious misperformance of duty may warrant rejection of the resulting award. In Darien Education Ass'n. v. Board of Education, 172 Conn. 434, 437-38, 374 A.2d 1081 (1977), [our Supreme Court] noted that [i]f the memorandum of an arbitrator revealed that he had reached his decision by consulting a ouija board, surely it should not suffice that the award conformed to the submission." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 94.
"Other states have also recognized that an arbitrator's egregious misperformance of duty or patently irrational application of legal principles warrants review and rejection of the resulting award. An award that manifests an egregious or patently irrational application of the law is an award that should be set aside pursuant to § 52-418(a)(4) because the arbitrator has exceeded his powers or so imperfectly executed them that a mutual, final and definite award upon the subject matter submitted was not made. [The court in Industrial Risk emphasized], however, that the manifest disregard of the law ground for vacating an arbitration award is narrow and should be reserved for circumstances of an arbitrator's extraordinary lack of fidelity to established legal principles." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 94-95.
II. THE SUBMISSION BEFORE THE COURT
In the present case, the submission made by the plaintiff is unquestionably unrestricted in nature. Our courts have held that a submission is restricted "only if the agreement contains express language restricting the breadth of issues, reserving explicit rights or conditioning the award on court review." Exley v. Connecticut Yankee Greyhound Racing, Inc., 59 Conn.App. 224, 229, 755 A.2d 990, cert. denied, 254 Conn. 939, 761 A.2d 760 (2000). Therefore, the court's review is limited to the statutory limitations provided in General Statutes § 52-418(a)(4) as the defendant has noted in the pleadings.
"In Garrity [v. McCaskey, 223 Conn. 1, 7-8, 612 A.2d 742 (1992), Connecticut] adopted the test enunciated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in interpreting the federal equivalent of § 52-418(a)(4) . . . The test consists of the following three elements, all of which must be satisfied in order for a court to vacate an arbitration award on the ground that the arbitration panel manifestly disregarded the law: (1) the error was obvious and capable of being readily and instantly perceived by the average person qualified to serve as an arbitrator; (2) the arbitration panel appreciated the existence of a clearly governing legal principle but decided to ignore it; and (3) the governing law alleged to have been ignored by the arbitration panel is well defined, explicit, and clearly applicable." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) McCann v. Dept. of Environmental Protection, supra, 288 Conn. 220-21.
The essence of the plaintiff's application complaint is that the arbitrator grossly misinterpreted the contract in such a manner as to violate the three prongs of the Garrity test. Of particular relevance in determining whether the Garrity test has been met in the present case is the text of the arbitration award, which provides, in relevant part:
If this dispute was limited to Section 8.3.2, the grievance would be meritorious. But there is more to this grievance than Section 8.3.2. It is axiomatic that collective bargaining agreements must be construed as a whole document.
Section 8.3.2 of the controlling collective bargaining agreement provides, in relevant part: "The regular annual workload for a Librarian (10-month) or Counselor (10-month) shall be five (5) days per week, which may include Saturday or Sunday, for a period of ten months (August 15 through June 15) unless otherwise agreed to be the individual concerned, all employees in Counselor (10-month) or Librarian (10-month) positions must have two consecutive days off in each week, at least one of which must be a Saturday or Sunday . . . The regular workday for a Librarian (10-month) or Counselor (10-month) shall be seven (7) continuous hours per day . . ."
Section 8.3.7 of the AFT Collective Bargaining Agreement delineates the duties that Counselors and Librarians may be required to perform. One of those enumerated duties is to `attend and participate in commencement ceremonies, unless excused by the President, wearing academic garb when required.' Unlike the requirement to `perform such other duties as the President may assign,' attending and participating in commencement ceremonies is not expressly subject to the workload limitations in Section 8.3.2.
Section 8.3.7 of the controlling collective bargaining agreement provides, in relevant part: "(a) within the workload limitations of Section 8.3.2, perform such other duties as the President may assign, provided that such duties shall be consistent with the mission of the college . . . (e) attend and participate in commencement ceremonies, unless excused by the President, wearing academic garb when required . . ."
It may well be that the drafters of Section 8.3.7 intended all the enumerated duties of Counselors and Librarians to be within the workload limitations of Section 8.3.2. and simply placed the qualifying language of subparagraph (a) in error. Nevertheless, that is how the contract reads and Arbitrators have no authority to add to, subtract from, alter, amend or modify any provision of the Agreement. Therefore, only the requirement that Counselors and Librarians `perform such other duties as the President may assign' is subject to the workload limitations of Section 8.3.2. The 35-hour workweek and consecutive days off limitations in Section 8.3.2 are inapplicable to attendance at and participation in commencement ceremonies."
As noted above, the alleged error of the arbitrator as stated by the plaintiff consists of an egregious misinterpretation of the agreement. After a careful review of the arbitrator's award, however, it is clear that such an argument does not apply in the present case. There has been no evidence offered by the plaintiff that indicates an obvious error in interpretation by the arbitrator; nor has there been any evidence offered that indicates ignorance of a clearly governing legal principle. Moreover, the plaintiffs have failed entirely to elucidate any applicable governing law that was ignored by the arbitrator at any point in the grievance process. On the contrary, all evidence available to the court, including the award itself, indicates a thoughtful and fair interpretation of the contractual principles undertaken by the arbitrator during the exercise of his responsibilities. See Comprehensive Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Care, LLC v. Axtmayer, 293 Conn. 748, 754-55, 980 A.2d 297 (2009) (holding that so long a plausible interpretation of the agreement was made by the arbitrator, the provisions of General Statutes § 52-418(a)(4) have been complied with).
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the plaintiffs have failed to articulate any evidence showing that the arbitrator exceeded his powers or imperfectly executed them. Accordingly, the plaintiff's application to vacate the arbitration award in question is hereby denied and the defendant's cross-application to confirm the arbitration award is hereby granted.