Piggly Wiggly Operators' Warehouse, Inc. v. Piggly Wiggly Operators' Warehouse Independent Truck Drivers Union, Local No. 1’s Empirical Analysis
611 F.2d 580 · 1980
Citation profile
67 federal appellate · 11 district · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 175 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably John Morrell Company v. Local Union 304a of United Food and Commercial Workers (1990), Grossmuller v. International Union, United Automobile Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America (1983)
67 federal appellate · 11 district · 20 state decisions — followed in 13 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co. · United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel and Car Corp · Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala. · United Steelworkers v. American Manufacturing Co. · Thompson v. United States
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 175 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[o]n whatever basis it rests, waiver, estoppel or new contract, the result is that the grievance submitted to the arbiter defines his authority without regard to whether the parties had a prior legal obligation to submit the dispute.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[O]nce the parties have gone beyond their promise to arbitrate and have actually submitted an issue to an arbiter, we must look both to their contract and to the submission of the issue to the arbitrator to determine his authority. If the parties enter into a submission agreement, this later contract is the substitute for legal pleadings; it joins the issues between the parties and empowers the arbitrator to decide it.... The parties may act formally and enter into a written submission agreement or they may merely ask the arbiter to decide the written grievance as it has been posed in their conciliation efforts. When they do so, they have in effect empowered him to decide the issues stated in the grievance. The grievance itself becomes the submission agreement and defines the limits of the arbitrator's authority. Arbitration is a matter of contract, but the initial contract to arbitrate may be modified by the submission agreement or grievance.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[O]nce the parties have gone beyond their promise to arbitrate and have actually submitted an issue to an arbiter, we must look both to their contract and to the submission of the issue to the arbitrator to determine his authority.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.