Greater Nanticoke Area School District v. Greater Nanticoke Area Educational Association

In Greater Nanticoke Area School District v. Greater Nanticoke Area Educational Association, 760 A.2d 1214 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2000), a school district appealed an arbitrator's award which found the school district to be in violation of the furlough provisions of the CBA when it demoted 10 full-time employees to part-time status. Similar to the argument advanced in this matter, the school district in Greater Nanticoke asserted that the arbitrator's interpretation was not rationally derived from the CBA because the word "furlough" was not ambiguous and meant as a matter of law an impermanent separation in the nature of a suspension or lay-off. In rejecting that argument and finding that the arbitrator's interpretation was rationally derived from the CBA, the Court explained that arbitration was unlike a common law action where a jury could decide the meaning of contract provision only if the trial judge determined as a matter of law that the provision was ambiguous. Id. at 1218. Instead, the Court noted that an arbitrator could use extrinsic evidence to determine the parties' intent stating "in the arbitration context the distinction between ambiguous and unambiguous contracts is of no evidentiary significance." Id.