Eleventh Circuit Decisions This Week

The Eleventh Circuit issued four opinions in the last two days, one yesterday and three today.  All four are civil cases that arise in a variety of contexts -- labor, civil procedure, bankruptcy, and an Alabama contract/tort case.

First, in Georgia Power v. NLRB, the Eleventh Circuit denied the NLRB's request for a contempt judgment against Georgia Power for allegedly violating the Eleventh Circuit's 1999 order (affirming an NLRB ruling) prohibiting unilateral changes to certain post-retirement benefits. Georgia Power subsequently negotiated with the union (IBEW) over further changes, but reached an impasse, and, pursuant to precedent allowing (in Georgia Power's view) a party to take unilateral action after reaching an impasse in good-faith negotiations, implemented the changes.  The Eleventh Circuit found there was not clear and convincing evidence of actions in contempt of the 1999 order, which only required notice to the union and an opportunity to negotiate, avoiding the broader question of the interpretation of the impasse rule, which it found inapplicable here due to the plain language of the order. However, it did note that Georgia Power's interpretation of the impasse rule was not clearly unreasonable.

In Florence v. Crescent Resources, the Eleventh Circuit re-emphasized the standard for finding fraudulent joinder is high. In this Florida environmental contamination case, the plaintiffs named two defendants who had been owners of the property, only one of whom was a Florida resident.  The nonresident removed to federal court, alleging that the resident defendant was fraudulently joined because Florida law provided no cause of action against him.  The Plaintiffs proposed a number of theories based on which they might be able to maintain a claim against the Florida resident.  However, in spite of the fact that the district court acknowledged that Florida law did not clearly exclude the possibility of these claims, it found he was fraudulently joined, dismissed him, and denied remand.  The Eleventh Circuit emphasized that the removing defendant must show that there is not even an arguable claim against the fraudulently joined defendant, and where state law is unclear, there is necessarily an arguable claim. Remand should have been granted.

In re Piccadilly Cafeterias addresses whether the 11 U.S.C. 1146(c) exemption from stamp taxes may apply to a pre-confirmation sale of assets (the Court held that it may, in some circumstances, although it left for another day the framework for determining when the exemption should be applied).  And Nimbus Technologies v. Sunndata Products, Inc. addressed issues of piercing the corporate veil and interference with business relations under Alabama law (Judge Black specially concurred on the veil piercing issue).