Tyskowski v. International Business Machines Corp.

Background

Michael R. Tyskowski sued International Business Machines Corp. under the Federal Arbitration Act and the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act. He asked the court to vacate, or set aside, a final arbitration order that favored IBM, dismissed his age-discrimination demand as untimely, and imposed sanctions. He also asked the court to declare certain waiver provisions in IBM’s arbitration agreement unenforceable.

Tyskowski worked at IBM from 1983 through 2016. He alleged that IBM engaged in a company-wide practice from 2013 through 2018 of discriminating against older employees in favor of hiring younger workers. After he was terminated sometime after turning 60, he sought arbitration under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The arbitration agreement required covered claims to be brought individually and required a written arbitration demand by the applicable legal filing deadline. It stated that an untimely demand would result in waiver of the claim.

Arguments

Tyskowski argued that his demand was timely under the “single rule filing,” also called the “piggybacking doctrine.” He had filed an opt-in notice seeking to join a pending age-discrimination collective action involving similar allegations against IBM. Tyskowski argued that this filing should have allowed his claim to proceed despite the ordinary deadline.

IBM argued that the arbitrator had considered and rejected the piggybacking doctrine. IBM also argued that the arbitration agreement required Tyskowski to bring his claim individually and that its class-action waiver prevented him from using the collective action to avoid the filing deadline.

Court’s Analysis

The court explained that an arbitration award receives substantial deference. A court may set one aside on limited statutory grounds, such as fraud, arbitrator bias, serious procedural misconduct, or exceeding the arbitrator’s authority. Tyskowski instead relied on the separate “manifest disregard of the law” doctrine. Under that demanding standard, the governing legal rule must be clear and directly applicable, and the arbitrator must have known about it but deliberately ignored it.

The court applied the 300-day filing rule for the age-discrimination claim. It stated that IBM asserted Tyskowski was terminated on May 31, 2016, making March 27, 2017 the deadline for a timely demand under the agreement. The court stated that Tyskowski filed his demand on March 19, 2021, nearly four years after that deadline. It concluded that the agreement plainly required a demand by the applicable limitations deadline and that failure to meet the deadline made the claims time-barred.

The court also concluded that Tyskowski could not avoid the deadline by opting into the earlier collective action. The agreement required his age-discrimination claim to be prosecuted as an individual claim and waived participation in a class action concerning that claim. The court noted that other courts in the district had rejected similar challenges to IBM’s class-action waiver provision.

Disposition

Judge Nelson S. Roman denied Tyskowski’s motion to vacate the arbitration award. The clerk was directed to terminate the motions at ECF Nos. 5 and 29 and to terminate the action.