Legal Decisions: Serafinn vs. IBT Local 722

Send to friend

Mark Serafinn, a member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and former President of Local 722 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), had won a jury trial in federal district court that awarded him compensatory and punitive damages for the Local's violation of his LMRDA free speech rights. The federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois also awarded Serafinn attorneys' fees. Serafinn and the Local each appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit claiming erroneous district court rulings during the course of the proceeding. In a March 2010 decision the 7th Circuit upheld the district court.

Summary of the District Court Decision

Serafinn, after serving three terms as President of Local 722, had lost in 2001 to Steve Mongan, a Hoffa supporter. Serafinn also ran for and lost the election for Vice President of IBT Joint Council 65, all of whose members were Hoffa supporters. Serafinn alleged that Mongan conspired with Joint Council President Keith Gleason to bring him up on charges of violating union work rules for referring himself during his last term of office for a coveted power plant job ahead of other trade union members who had greater eligibility. Serafinn had claimed that Gleason and Mongan knew that the charges were untrue and that they were motivated by anti-TDU animus and by Serafinn's statements in a union newsletter that Mongan was dumb, suppressed free speech and engaged in cronyism. Witnesses at the hearing held by the joint council, Serafinn claimed, had lied about their own and other's eligibility after Mongan had threatened their jobs. Serafinn was found guilty and ordered to pay restitution and was suspended for six months.

The district court concluded that there was insufficient evidence for a jury to find that the joint council charged Serafinn because he exercised his right to free speech and granted summary judgment for the district council on this charge. However, the jury did get to consider the case against the local and found for Serafinn. (Ed. Note: see related article on back page for fuller background.)

Serafinn claimed that newly discovered evidence, presented at the trial, warranted the district court now allowing his claim against the joint council to be considered, but the district court refused that. He appealed the case to the Circuit Court. On appeal to the 7th Circuit, Serafinn objected to the court's ruling of refusal to allow the claim against the joint council. He also claimed that the court's award of fees to his attorneys was too small. Meanwhile, the local also appealed to the Circuit Court, challenging the district court's ruling about the standard it should apply in considering the evidence and to its instructions to the jury limiting what evidence it could consider.

District Council issue

The District Court had found that Serafinn had failed, as a matter of law, to show in his pleadings anything that a jury could find as unlawfully motivated conduct by the Joint Council or President Gleason. For instance, it said that Serafinn failed to allege any previous antagonism with Gleason, or any procedural unfairness in the conduct of the hearing, or that anyone who was similarly charged and found to have violated union work rules was treated differently, or that Gleason and the Joint Council knew or should have known that the witnesses against Serafinn were lying.

Serafinn in his appeal to the Circuit Court argued that there was enough evidence to raise questions of fact for a jury as to whether the Joint Council and Gleason were conspiring with Mongan to set-up Serafinn. The 7th Circuit used an "abuse of discretion" standard in considering the matter. It held that the District Court did not have discretion to amend its summary judgment decision because the additional evidence had to be non-cumulative, not just an expansion of previous allegations, and the new evidence was not. Therefore Serafinn's appeal was denied.

District Court jury instructions issues

Most important with regard to other LMRDA cases was the Circuit's discussion of the burden of proof under the LMRDA. The district court had instructed the jury that it was to use a "but/for" analysis of the evidence, in other words that the exercise of free speech was a necessary condition. The local had argued for a "mixed motive" instruction that, the Circuit said, would have ended up by allowing Serafinn to establish the local's liability merely by showing that an improper consideration was a "motivating factor" in the action alleged. The local had claimed that the jury should have been told that if it found another motive for the Local's action besides the suppression of Serafinn's free speech rights, it could apportion blame as to Serafinn's and the local's conduct. The 7th Circuit concluded that a mixed motive instruction would have ended up by shifting the burden of proof from Serafinn to the Local and that the district court had no discretion to do that. The Court concluded that following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, the burden of proof under the LMRDA could not be shifted from the plaintiff, in this case Serafinn. The LMRDA, the court said, required Serafinn to establish that "but for" the Local's unlawful motivation to suppress his freedom of speech, he never would have been prosecuted for a work rules violation. Since that imposed a much greater burden on Serafinn than the jury instructions the local wanted, the Court expressed puzzlement as to why the local would seek something so obviously against its interests. Serafinn had also challenged the instructions and the court rejected that too, as impermissible under the recent Supreme Court ruling.

Also challenged by the local was the ruling that the jury could not consider the finding by the joint council that Serafinn had violated union work rules. Evidence of the joint council's decision, the court said, was not relevant to the Local's motive for prosecuting Serafinn in the first place. The 7th Circuit found that the local had waived a challenge to this ruling by failing to present any argument against it.

The local also challenged the district court's rulings with regard to permissible jury consideration of a witness's drunk driving misdemeanor convictions. The 7th Circuit held that although there was error by the court below with regard to part of the instructions, the local had failed to explain why a portion of the instruction was not admissible for certain purposes and also failed to demonstrate prejudice to it resulting from permitting the jury to consider the convictions.

Finally, the Court of Appeals upheld the District Court's significant reduction of attorneys' fees from the amount requested. It found that the district court had not abused its "wide" discretion with regard to that determination.

From a union democracy perspective, the bottom line is that the local was significantly punished under the LMRDA for its attempt to suppress the freedom of speech of a union dissident.