Brown v. New Orleans Clerks and Checkers Union Local No. 1497 I.L.A. and New Orleans Steamship Association

This is an employment discrimination case based on Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5 Et seq., and on 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The district court granted a motion to intervene and gave the intervenors partial relief. Defendants appeal from these orders. We find that the district court has entered no appealable order and therefore dismiss this appeal. In 1971, the original plaintiffs, acting individually and on behalf of all blacks who had applied for employment with defendants, sued the New Orleans Clerks and Checkers Union, Local 1497 of International Longshoremen's Association, AFL-CIO, and the New Orleans Steamship Association, a group of employers. Plaintiffs alleged that these defendants control employment practices in the ports and other maritime facilities in and around New Orleans and that defendants impermissibly restricted the employment of blacks in the area. In May, 1975, the district judge ordered that notices be placed in various local newspapers explaining the class action, stating that the parties had reached a proposed consent decree and directing those who wished to be excluded from the class and the decree to notify the court clerk. The judge allowed one of the original plaintiffs, Brown, to opt out of the settlement and pursue the action individually. Other than Brown, no class member sought to exclude himself from the settlement and all parties and the trial judge signed the consent decree in June, 1975. In September, 1975, three members of the class, Newman, Cutrer, and Neyland, asked the court to order the consent decree inapplicable to them and to allow them to intervene in Brown's individual action. These intervenors argued that this relief was proper because the notice of the consent decree placed in the local papers was misleading in two ways. First, they asserted that the notice implied that all class members would receive back pay, which they did not. Only the named plaintiffs received back pay. Second, the notice failed to inform the class members that in order to be rehired, the consent decree required that they contact the union and achieve one of the seventeen highest scores on a test the union administered to determine union membership. Intervenors allege that had the notices not been so misleading, they would have opted out of the decree and sought back pay as Brown did. Also, although two of the intervenors were already members of the union and could not benefit by taking the test, Neyland was not, and he argued that the misleading decree prevented him from timely contacting the union and taking the qualification test. The district judge granted the motion to intervene, limiting the issues to whether the intervenors were entitled to back pay. The judge also directed that Neyland be ""ALLOWED to register as a union member . . . ."" Order of June 24, 1976 at 3. On motion of the intervenors, the judge later clarified this order stating: ""It was the intent of the Court's minute entry of June 24, 1976, that Jimmy Neyland be allowed to register as a member of the union and to register as a clerk checker with the New Orleans Steamship Association, i. e., to have the same rights he would have if he had received proper notice of the consent decree."" Order of July 9, 1976. Pursuant to this clarified order, the union allowed Neyland to take the qualification test. Neyland failed to score among the top seventeen places, however, and therefore no longer seeks to become a union member. Nevertheless, defendants appeal from the district court's orders of June 24 and July 9.