United States Ninth Circuit

In plaintiff-flight engineer's action under various whistleblower protection laws against an airline, judgment on the pleadings for one defendant and the confirmation of an arbitral award in favor of another is affirmed in part where: 1) the filing and denial of a motion to disqualify an arbitrator in one arbitration did not establish bias in a subsequent arbitration, and the arbitrator's supposed affiliations, and plaintiff's unsupported assertions about their ideologies, did not establish bias; 2) plaintiff chose to bring only California state-law claims, argued strenuously that California's interests were paramount, waited nearly a year-until a substantive motion was pending against their complaint- before attempting to amend it, and did not show that Hawaii law was different on the merits. However, the judgment is reversed in part where plaintiff's state-law claim was not "related to" a "service" for purposes of Federal Airline Deregulation Act preemption.

Appellate Information

• Decided 04/30/2010
• Published 04/30/2010

Judges

• Before ALFRED T. GOODWIN, ROBERT R. BEEZER and RICHARD C. TALLMAN, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Martin Ventress, Pro se, Houston, TX, for the plaintiff-appellant.


• For Appellees:
  
• Andrew L. Pepper, Carlsmith Ball, Honolulu, HI, for defendants-appellees Japan Airlines and Jalways, Co., Carl Osaki, Honolulu, HI, for defendant-appellee Hawaii Aviation Contract Services.