Better to pay this than the Addington Debacle. Everyone but your lawyers got the fact you have to have damage before you sue. And just because you lost your precious lottery ticket isn't harm. It is purely imagined harm. By the way, the Nic is not in place, is it..........
Here is a clue for the clueless. If the company could have imposed the Nic, it would have been done long, long ago. They obviously know, but are playing you and trying to get the judge to take the heat so they don't have a bunch of kids crying when the truth comes home. Everything they could legally do, they do.And right away. Figure it out. They can't do the Nic. It is that simple.
Addington was not a debacle, except perhaps for the east. When a judge and jury evaluated the merits of the west class claim, USAPA was handed a loss and an injunction to go along with it. The Ninth by a 2:1 margin determined that the case was not ripe until a contract is ratified and specifically said they were not making any determination on the thorny issues of the merits of whether or not a non-NIC list would be a DFR. Not weighing in means they did not have a legal basis upon which to review the merits because they had already excluded themselves from looking at the merits by their claim of non-jurisdiction. What they did portray for all the world to see, and which was pick up by judge Silver was that they agreed that USAPA's actions would harm the west if the NIC was discarded in favor of a proposal that was more biased towards the east pilots. The fact that Silver referenced that and the other related documents from the Addington trial means that this was anything but a waste of legal resources.
Your logic belies the weakness in your own argument. The Company did accept the NIC because it met with every legal and contractual criterion for acceptance. What they could not do was force USAPA to accept it and move to a TA/JCBA. What they could not do, thanks to Addington, was accept any of USAPA's non-NIC proposals. Like you say, if they could have accepted it they would have, but they know that USAPA cannot simply abandon its DFR to the west pilots and that USAPA cannot alter a Collective Bargaining Agreement (Transition Agreement) without all parties agreeing to do so.
Here's what we know from the facts in the DJ case:
* Silver determined that the Company's DJ filing is ripe and she owes them relief on their claims
* Silver acknowledged that the federal courts have embraced the concept that the west pilots have been harmed
* Silver acknowledged that the Company faces two real and irreconcilable threats: 1) that the west pilots have the legal grounds to file a collusion suit against the Company if they discard the NIC, and 2) that USAPA can continue under the RLA to place the operational and financial performance of the Company at serious risk if the seniority section of the proposed collective bargaining agreement is not resolved by the court.
* Silver has been convinced that the DJ is a different matter than Addington and that the Ninth's decision on ripeness does not preclude her from making on ruling on the Company's claim on Counts 1 - 4
That means she will rule (perhaps by summary judgement as was requested by all parties involved) and grant relief to the Company. If she rules in summary, then that means she has all of the information she needs from the previous Addington proceedings to make her DFR decision. Since the Ninth didn't get into that thorny issue, that means she will be using the records from Wake's courtroom to make her DJ decision. Hmm, wonder how that will turn out?
