Source: https://openjurist.org/364/us/642
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 03:47:36+00:00

Document:
O. V. WRIGHT et al.
Mr. Richard R. Lyman, Toledo, Ohio, for petitioners.
Mr. Marshall P. Eldred, Louisville, Ky., for respondents.
Messrs. John P. Sandidge, Woodward, Hobson & Fulton, H. G. Breetz, W. L. Grubbs, M. D. Jones and Joseph L. Lenihan, Louisville, Ky., for Louisville & Nashville R. Co.
and which forbid any carrier from requiring 'any person seeking employment to sign any contract or agreement promising to join * * * a labor organization * * *.' Also relied upon was the duty of the exclusive bargaining agent to represent fairly and without discrimination all members of the class represented. See Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 323 U.S. 192, 65 S.Ct. 226, 89 L.Ed. 173. The factual allegations set forth a pattern of discriminations effected by the railroad and the defendant unions against nonunion employees.
'It is to be remembered that the provisions of the Railway Labor Act made illegal a union shop in 1945, when the injunction was agreed upon. Hence, it was then unnecessary for the railroad and the unions to agree, as they did, that the non-union members should not then be required to join or maintain membership in any of their craft unions as a condition precedent to employment. The law so prohibited, Section 152, Fourth and Fifth, Title 45, United States Code Annotated, Railway Labor Act. The railroad and unions went further to provide by their agreement that no such requirement of union membership should thereafter be in effect in any bargaining agreement in accordance with the provisions of the Railway Labor Act. The 1951 amendment to the Act did no more than make negotiations for a union shop permissive, Railway Employees' Dept. v. Hanson, supra. The amendment did not nullify the agreement or the injunction. It did not prohibit an agreement between the railroad and the unions that a union shop should not exist. Hence, the Court leaves the parties as they agreed to be and to remain.' 165 F.Supp. 443, 449.
Though making it clear that evidence of continued union hostility against nonunion employees was not decisive, the District Court gave some weight to the administrative difficulty of preventing unlawful discriminations against nonunion employees that might be facilitated if there were a union shop. The Sixth Circuit affirmed 'for the reasons set forth in the opinion of Chief Judge Shelbourne' in the District Court. 272 F.2d 56, 58. We granted certiorari because of the importance of the issues involved. 362 U.S. 948, 80 S.Ct. 262, 4 L.Ed.2d 867.
There is also no dispute but that a sound judicial discretion may call for the modification of the terms of an injunctive decree if the circumstances, whether of law or fact, obtaining at the time of its issuance have changed, or new ones have since arisen. The source of the power to modify is of course the fact that an injunction often requires continuing supervision by the issuing court and always a continuing willingness to apply its powers and processes on behalf of the party who obtained that equitable relief. Firmness and stability must no doubt be attributed to continuing injunctive relief based on adjudicated facts and law, and neither the plaintiff nor the court should be subjected to the unnecessary burden of re-establishing what has once been decided. Nevertheless the court cannot be required to disregard significant changes in law or facts if it is 'satisfied that what it was been doing has been turned through changing circumstances into an instrument of wrong.' United States v. Swift & Co., supra, 286 U.S. at pages 114—115, 52 S.Ct. at page 462. A balance must thus be struck between the policies of res judicata and the right of the court to apply modified measures to changed circumstances.
Where there is such a balance of imponderable there must be wide discretion in the District Court. But discretion is never without limits and these limits are often far clearer to the reviewing court when the new circumstances involve a change in law rather than facts. When the decree in this case was originally made, union shop agreements were prohibited by the Railway Labor Act and thus constituted in themselves a form of statutorily forbidden discrimination. Congress has since, in the clearest terms, legislated that bargaining for and the existence of a union shop contract, satisfying the conditions provided in § 2 Eleventh of the Railway Labor Act, are not forbidden discriminations by union or employer. Congress has therefore determined that whatever ways such a union shop arrangement facilitates other, unauthorized discriminations must be borne as inescapable incidents of a legislatively approved contract term.
Had the 1945 decree simply represented relief awarded by the District Court after a trial of the action instituted by petitioners, there could be little doubt but that, faced with the 1951 amendment to the Railway Labor Act, it would have been improvident for the court to continue in effect this provision of the injunction prohibiting a union shop agreement as being unlawful per se, or its use as an instrument to effectuate other statutorily forbidden discriminations. That provision was well enough under the earlier Railway Labor Act, but to continue it after the 1951 amendment would be to render protection in no way authorized by the needs of safeguarding statutory rights at the expense of a privilege denied and deniable to no other union. This conclusion would not be affected by the circumstance, which the District Court here found, that the unions' hostility to nonunion employees still continued, for any discriminations that might be facilitated by the union shop clause have been legislatively determined to be an expense more than offset by the benefits of such a provision.
The principles of the Wheeling Bridge case have repeatedly been followed by lower federal and state courts.6 We find no reason to recede from them.
This Court has never departed from that general rule.7 We continue to adhere to it because of the policy it expresses. The parties cannot, by giving each other consideration, purchase from a court of equity a continuing injunction. In a case like this the District Court's authority to adopt a consent decree comes only from the statute which the decree is intended to enforce. Frequently of course the terms arrived at by the parties are accepted without change by the adopting court. But just as the adopting court is free to reject agreed-upon terms as not in furtherance of statutory objectives, so must it be free to modify the terms of a consent decree when a change in law brings those terms in conflict with statutory objectives. In short, it was the Railway Labor Act, and only incidentally the parties, that the District Court served in entering the consent decree now before us. The court must be free to continue to further the objectives of that Act when its provisions are amended. The parties have no power to require of the court continuing enforcement of rights the statute no longer gives.
The type of decree the parties bargained for is the same as the only type of decree a court can properly grant—one with all those strengths and infirmities of any litigated decree which arise out of the fact that the court will not continue to exercise its powers thereunder when a change in law or facts has made inequitable what was once equitable. The parties could not become the conscience of the equity court and decide for it once and for all what was equitable and what was not, because the court was not acting to enforce a promise but to enforce a statute.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed, and the case remanded to it for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, with whom Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER and Mr. Justice WHITTAKER concur, dissenting in part.
This controversy commenced in 1945 prior to the time when so-called union shop agreements were authorized by Congress. Act of Jan. 10, 1951, 64 Stat. 1238, 45 U.S.C. § 152, Eleventh, 45 U.S.C.A. § 152, Eleventh. Since the date of that law, which we upheld in Railway Employes' Dept. v. Hanson, 351 U.S. 225, 76 S.Ct. 714, 100 L.Ed. 1112, employees and carriers may negotiate that type of agreement, though they are not required to do so. Id., 351 U.S. at page 231, 76 S.Ct. at page 717. Prior to that date, however, a union shop was barred by law in this industry; and a union that discriminated against nonunion members was accountable to them. See Steele v. Louisville & N.R. Co., 323 U.S. 192, 207, 65 S.Ct. 226, 234.
Twenty-eight nonunion members sued petitioners, in 1945, claiming damages in the amount of $140,000. The complaint purported to state a class action. But the case never came to trial. A settlement was reached which provided for (a) the payment of $5,000 in cash; (b) the waiver and release by the 28 plaintiffs of all their claims; and (c) a consent decree which would protect 'the undersigned' against future acts of discrimination by petitioners.
I do not think the consent decree, read in light of the settlement, did more than settle claims of then-existing employees. Employees hired in the future were, by its terms, not included. Yet apparently a host of them have intervened, seeking the protection of the statute quo created by that decree. I use the word 'apparently' because the record does not show which intervenors were on the payroll of the carrier in 1945. Those who became employed after that date plainly are not entitled to the protection of the decree. Of those who were employed at that time, we know that some are still employed. Of the latter group, at least seven of the original 28 employees are still on the payroll. These seven released valuable claims for settling their disputes. It is harsh and unjust to deprive them of those fruits of the settlement. Whether there are others employed in 1945 who have a like claim to fair dealing is impossible to tell from the record.
45 U.S.C. § 152, 45 U.S.C.A. § 152.
Each of the 28 plaintiffs had claimed $5,000 in damages.
45 U.S.C. § 152, Eleventh, 45 U.S.C.A. § 152, Eleventh. See Railway Employees' Department v. Hanson, 351 U.S. 225, 76 S.Ct. 714, 100 L.Ed. 1112.
In the view we take of the case we need not consider whether such a commitment of indefinite duration is valid.
In McGrath v. Potash, 91 U.S.App.D.C. 94, 199 F.2d 166, after Congress passed a statute excluding from the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C.A. § 1001 et seq., deportation proceedings, the District of Columbia Circuit vacated an injunction against the Government requiring compliance with that Act. There are many cases where a mere change in decisional law has been held to justify modification of an outstanding injunction. E.g., Ladner v. Siegel, 298 Pa. 487, 148 A. 699, 68 A.L.R. 1172 (whether a garage in a residential district is a nuisance); Santa Rita Oil & Gas Co. v. State Board of Equalization, 112 Mont. 359, 116 P.2d 1012, 136 A.L.R. 757 (what federal instrumentalities are exempt from state taxation); Coca-Cola Co. v. Standard Bottling Co., 10 Cir., 138 F.2d 788 (whether the use of the word 'cola' infringed Coca-Cola's trademark); and see Western Union Tel. Co. v. International Brotherhood, 7 Cir., 133 F.2d 955 (whether ordinary strikes are forbidden by the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1—7, 15 note, and what picketing can constitutionally be enjoined).
We consider unpersuasive the argument of the railroad that in 1945 there was already on foot a movement to amend the Railway Labor Act so as to permit union shop agreements.

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