Source: http://openjurist.org/640/f2d/708/scott-v-moore
Timestamp: 2015-08-29 12:47:06
Document Index: 190513665

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1985', '§ 107', '§ 1985', '§ 1985', '§ 1985', '§ 1985', '§ 1985', '§ 1985', '§ 1985', '§ 1985', '§ 1985']

640 F2d 708 Scott v. Moore | OpenJurist
640 F. 2d 708 - Scott v. Moore Home
640 F2d 708 Scott v. Moore 640 F.2d 708
106 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2870, 91 Lab.Cas. P 12,677
Paul E. SCOTT et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees,v.Bill MOORE et al., Defendants,Laborers International Union of North America, Local No. 870et al., Defendants-Appellants,International Union of Operating Engineers, etc., AFL-CIO,Local 450, Defendant-Appellant.
Martin W. Dies, Orange, Tex., William N. Wheat, Paul F. Waldner, Houston, Tex., for IUOE, Local 450.
This appeal presents important questions concerning the scope of relief available under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3), the extent of congressional power to enact a civil remedy for wholly private infringement of constitutional rights, and the relationship between section 1985(3) and the labor relations laws. The district court issued a permanent injunction against the defendants, including numerous labor organizations. It also awarded money damages for violations of section 1985(3), concluding that the statute afforded a remedy for the kind of private conspiracy involved here and that Congress was constitutionally empowered to provide such a remedy. For the reasons stated below, we affirm in part and reverse in part.
This case arises out of an episode of mob violence that occurred in the early morning hours of January 17, 1975. The plaintiffs are A. A. Cross Construction Company, Inc., and two of its employees, Paul Scott and James Matthews. The defendants include the Sabine Area Building and Construction Trades Council, a loose confederation of craft and construction unions located in the Port Arthur, Texas, area. Also named as defendants are twenty-five of the Council's member unions and several individual members of some of these labor unions. The individual defendants are not parties to this appeal. The plaintiffs contend that the defendants conspired for the purpose of depriving them of the equal protection of the laws and equal privileges and immunities under the law when they planned and executed an attack on the Cross construction site, assaulting workers and destroying property.
A. A. Cross Construction Company is a Texas corporation engaged in the building and construction industry as a general contractor. In May, 1974, Cross contracted with the Department of the Army, United States Corps of Engineers to erect the Alligator Bayou Pumping Station and Gravity Drainage Structure on the hurricane levee along Taylor's Bayou near Port Arthur. The agreement had a contract price in excess of $8 million and called for the construction of the pump station with four pumps and a gravity drain for flood control. In accordance with its customary practice, the Cross Construction Company hired its workers for the Alligator Bayou project without regard to union affiliation, employing persons solely on the basis of its own need for the applicant's occupational skills. Cross did not have a collective bargaining agreement with any labor union, and when this incident occurred no union was seeking to organize the company's employees. In addition, Cross often hired workers from outside the Port Arthur community.
Cross Construction Company's hiring practices provoked an antipathetic response from some segments of the Port Arthur community. In fact, on several occasions prior to the eruption of violence on January 17, popular enmity had risen to the level of warnings and threats directed against Cross and its employees. Local residents had confronted Cross employees at a local tavern and pool hall frequented by them, threatening to place pickets at the construction site, promising to make Cross "go union," and occasionally warning of trouble if Cross did not cease hiring nonunion laborers. About three months before the January 17 attack, one of the individual defendants, Bill Moore, approached Mr. Cross and threatened that he would "hurt you bad," saying, "What is going to happen when that big rig of yours down there burns up?" On another occasion, John Wallace, financial secretary and business representative for the Carpenters Local 610, had told Cross that "this is union country" and that if he persisted in using nonunion labor it was "going to cost you a million dollars."
On the morning of January 17, after most of the Cross employees had arrived at work, a crowd of nearly three hundred people assembled at the main access road leading to the Cross construction site. Several vehicles made brief forays up the access road, and their occupants confirmed with Cross and Scott that they were at the Cross Construction Company jobsite. The crowd began to get unruly, pushing and shoving the remaining Cross workers as they arrived. Nevertheless, Cross's employees began work as usual. Then, shortly after 7:00 that morning, a group of four pickup trucks, each carrying between twelve and eighteen persons, emerged from the crowd gathered at the access road and drove onto the jobsite. Plaintiff Scott went out to meet the intruders and to request them to leave the area, but one of them approached Scott and said, "Man, you all have got to be crazy ... this is a union town." Scott told his interlocutor that they did not want any trouble, and he attempted to gather together the other employees and to leave the jobsite. However, before he could complete his mission, someone stepped out of the group and struck him on the head. Suddenly, the mob swarmed over the construction site, brutally beating Cross and his employees with iron rods and wooden boards, overturning and setting fire to the trailer that served as the construction site office, smashing automobile and truck windshields, and vandalizing company tools and equipment. The entire episode lasted only a few minutes, but the destruction was devastating. Cross and his employees were treated for their injuries at a local hospital, and work at the construction site did not resume for nearly three weeks. Some of Cross's employees, frightened by the possibility of repeated attacks at the jobsite, refused to return to work. In addition, the violence and vandalism delayed the completion of the project by about six months, ultimately causing the Cross Construction Company to default in its contractual obligation to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.
On January 31, 1975, plaintiffs Scott and Matthews initiated this lawsuit against the individual defendants. They sought and obtained a temporary injunction retraining the then-named defendants and "all persons, firms, and associations combining or conspiring with defendants" from further violent, intimidating, or destructive acts against employees at the Alligator Bayou Pump Station project. Nearly two years later, the plaintiffs amended their complaint, adding A. A. Cross Construction Company, Inc., as plaintiff and the Sabine Area Building and Construction Trades Council along with twenty-five local unions as defendants. The district court found that the plaintiffs had proved a conspiracy to deprive them of the equal protection of the laws, permanently enjoined the building trades council and twenty-four of the unions from future misconduct, and assessed damages against eleven of the union defendants.1
... shall not hereafter combine, conspire, threaten, intimidate, assault, or commit any act of violence toward or upon any person, property or possession of any person or his family who may work upon, travel to, deliver materials, goods, or services to A. A. Cross Construction Co., Inc., or to the site of the alligator Bayou Pump Station on Taylor's Bayou near Port Arthur, Jefferson County, Texas.
But the Act does not impose an unqualified prohibition against federal injunctive relief. Section 105 merely restricts the court's power to enjoin concerted or conspiratorial activity where the conduct to be enjoined is an act enumerated in section 104.2 The enumerated acts include refusing to work, joining a labor organization, paying or withholding strike benefits from a labor disputant, lawfully giving aid to a labor disputant who is prosecuting or defending a court action, truthfully and peacefully publicizing a labor dispute, peacefully assembling to promote one's interests in a labor dispute, and agreeing with or inducing other persons to do any of those acts. In short, section 104 interdicts injunctive relief against the legitimate activities of labor unions. However, there is nothing in this provision denying to federal courts the power to enjoin violence, breaches of the peace, or criminal acts simply because they may be committed by persons participating or interested in a labor dispute.
In fact, the Norris-LaGuardia Act itself implicitly recognizes the threatened commission of violent acts as a condition under which an injunction may issue. Section 107 states that no court of the United States has jurisdiction to grant an injunction, unless, after a hearing, the court finds "(t)hat unlawful acts have been threatened and will be committed unless restrained...." 29 U.S.C. § 107(a). Thus, violence, intimidation, threats, vandalism and combinations or conspiracies to commit such acts may be restrained and enjoined even though they arise in connection with a labor dispute. See, e. g., Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. v. Dukakis, 412 F.Supp. 580 (D.Mass.1976); Potomac Electric Power Co. v. Congress of Racial Equality, 209 F.Supp. 599 (D.D.C.1962). The Norris-LaGuardia Act does not divest the district court of jurisdiction to enjoin the kind of violent conduct present in this case.3III. THE STATUTORY QUESTION: THE SCOPE OF REMEDY UNDER
42 U.S.C. § 1985(3)
Section 1985(3) was originally enacted by Congress as a part of the Ku Klux Klan Act in order to enforce the Civil War amendments to the Constitution and to provide a means of redress for persons victimized by the Klan's acts of terror and intimidation. The statute imposes civil liability on persons conspiring to deprive another person or class of persons of "the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws."4 Narrow judicial construction made section 1985(3) a seldom-used remedy during the first century after its enactment. See, e. g., Collins v. Hardyman, 341 U.S. 651, 71 S.Ct. 937, 95 L.Ed. 1253 (1951). However, the Supreme Court decided in 1971 to "accord to the words of the statute their apparent meaning" and held section 1985(3) provided a civil remedy for damages against wholly private infringements of constitutionally protected rights. Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 97, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 1795, 29 L.Ed.2d 338, 345 (1971). In Griffin, a group of whites assaulted three black men along a Mississippi highway in the mistaken belief that their victims were the associates of a civil rights worker. The blacks brought an action under section 1985(3) to redress violations of the laws of the United States and of Mississippi, including the rights of free speech, assembly, association, interstate travel, liberty, and security of their persons. The Supreme Court first held that the text of the statute, recent judicial interpretations given to related civil rights provisions, the complementary relationship of the various civil rights statutes, and the legislative history surrounding section 1985(3) all "point unwaveringly to § 1985(3)'s coverage of private conspiracies." 403 U.S. at 101, 91 S.Ct. at 1798, 29 L.Ed.2d at 347.
While eliminating the state action requirement, the Griffin court was concerned that the statute, if applied too broadly, would displace many areas of tort law that have traditionally been reserved to the states and thereby violate constitutionally-based principles of federalism. "That the Statute was meant to reach private activity does not ... mean that it was intended to apply to all tortious, conspiratorial interferences with the rights of others." 403 U.S. at 101, 91 S.Ct. at 1798, 29 L.Ed.2d at 347. Accordingly, the Court read section 1985(3) to apply only to actions which are inspired by "some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus." 403 U.S. at 102, 91 S.Ct. at 1798, 29 L.Ed.2d at 348. It then delineated four elements necessary for a plaintiff to establish a § 1985(3) cause of action:
See id. at 102-03, 91 S.Ct. at 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d at 348. Subsequently, this court has added a fifth element,(5) that the conspirators' conduct must be unlawful independent of the section 1985(3) violation.
Griffin's principles indicate the plaintiffs here have made out a cause of action under section 1985(3). The facts of this case clearly embody four of the five elements essential to a successful § 1985(3) claim. First, the evidence is sufficient to establish a conspiracy among some of the Council's constituent unions and individual defendants. Second, proof that plaintiffs were assaulted, beaten, and threatened and that property was destroyed establishes the requisite "act in furtherance" of the conspiracy. Third, these acts are indisputably illegal apart from § 1985(3) as required by McLellan. Fourth, there is evidence of personal injuries, property damage, and economic loss. The only element requiring analysis is the requirement that the conspiracy be for the purpose of depriving a person of the equal protection of the laws or equal privileges and immunities under the laws. This requirement, in turn, has two components: (1) the violation of some protected right and (2) a class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus motivating the violation.
In Griffin, the Supreme Court stated that a § 1985(3) conspiracy "must aim at a deprivation of the equal enjoyment of rights secured by the law to all." 403 U.S. at 102, 91 S.Ct. at 1798, 29 L.Ed.2d at 348. The plaintiffs in the case at bar contend that the object of the defendants' conspiracy was to deprive them of their First Amendment right to associate with their fellow nonunion employees. They argue that curtailment of their interests secured by the First Amendment is a deprivation of equal protection of the laws within the meaning of section 1985(3) as interpreted by Griffin.
The Ku Klux Klan Act was originally entitled, "An Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for Other Purposes." 17 Stat. 13 (1871). The guaranties afforded by the First Amendment are protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. E. g., Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 30-31, 98 S.Ct. 5, 10, 21 L.Ed.2d 24, 31 (1968); New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 276-77, 84 S.Ct. 710, 724, 11 L.Ed.2d 686, 704 (1964); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303, 60 S.Ct. 900, 903, 84 L.Ed. 1213, 1217 (1940); De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364, 57 S.Ct. 255, 260, 81 L.Ed. 278, 283 (1937). Moreover, the right of free association is closely aligned with the right of free speech and is similarly protected by the First Amendment. E. g., Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209, 233, 97 S.Ct. 1782, 1798-99, 52 L.Ed.2d 261, 283 (1977); Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169, 181, 92 S.Ct. 2338, 2346, 33 L.Ed.2d 266, 279 (1972); Baird v. State Bar of Arizona, 401 U.S. 1, 6, 91 S.Ct. 702, 705, 27 L.Ed.2d 639, 646 (1971); NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 462, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 1171-72, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488, 1499 (1958).
The defendants urge that section 1985(3) does not provide a remedy for private interference with First Amendment freedoms. They appeal to the well-established principle that the Fourteenth Amendment "erects no shield against merely private conduct, however discriminating or wrongful." Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 13, 68 S.Ct. 836, 842, 92 L.Ed. 1161, 1180 (1948). To support their construction of section 1985(3), the defendants rely upon several decisions of the Seventh Circuit. In Dombrowski v. Dowling, 459 F.2d 190 (7th Cir. 1972), the court held that section 1985(3) does not afford protection against private deprivations of rights protected under the Fourteenth Amendment absent some kind of state involvement. Emphasizing the historical connection between sections 1983 and 1985(3), the court decided that it is necessary to identify the interests which Congress intended to protect from unequal treatment as well as the kinds of conduct which it meant to proscribe.
459 F.2d at 195 (footnotes omitted).5 Subsequently the Seventh Circuit has extended the Dombrowski rationale in Murphy v. Mount Carmel High School, 543 F.2d 1189 (7th Cir. 1976), expressly holding that section 1985(3) provides no remedy for purely private impairment of First Amendment speech and associational freedoms. Accord Bellamy v. Mason's Stores, Inc., 508 F.2d 504 (4th Cir. 1974).
The Seventh Circuit's reasoning is contrary to the Supreme Court's analysis in Griffin. Of course, most basic constitutional provisions impose limitations on the power of government to regulate private conduct. Thus, the rights they confer on individuals are typically rights of the individual against the state. But the Griffin court, after acknowledging the conceptual difficulties associated with private deprivations of constitutional rights, construed section 1985(3) to reach both public and private constitutional wrongs.
A century of Fourteenth Amendment adjudication has ... made it understandably difficult to conceive what might constitute a deprivation of the equal protection of the laws by private persons. Yet there is nothing inherent in the phrase that requires the action working the deprivation to come from the State. Indeed, the failure to mention any such requisite can be viewed as an important indication of congressional intent to speak in § 1985(3) of all deprivations of "equal protection of the laws" and "equal privileges and immunities under the laws," whatever their source.
403 U.S. at 97, 91 S.Ct. at 1796, 29 L.Ed.2d at 345 (citation omitted and some emphasis supplied). Thus, Griffin made it unmistakably clear that section 1985(3) was intended to provide a remedy for all private conspiracies. "It is thus evident that all indicators text, companion provisions, and legislative history point unwaveringly to § 1985(3)'s coverage of private conspiracies." Id. at 101, 91 S.Ct. at 1798, 29 L.Ed.2d at 347.6 The Griffin Court's method of analysis and the unequivocal language of its opinion foreclose our adoption of the approach taken by the Seventh Circuit.
In addition, the interpretation given to the statute in this circuit makes that approach unnecessary. Although Griffin found that section 1985(3) covered purely private conspiracies, it did not announce what might constitute a deprivation of equal protection by private persons. Uncertainty in this regard may have contributed to the Seventh Circuit's decision to retain some form of state involvement as a part of the § 1985(3) cause of action. See Dombrowski, 459 F.2d at 194. However, this circuit has adopted a different tack. McLellan establishes that section 1985(3) was not intended to redress every conceivable private interference with another's rights. Rather, "the object of a section 1985(3) conspiracy must be to deprive another of the enjoyment of legal rights by independently unlawful conduct." McLellan, 545 F.2d at 927 (footnote omitted). The independent illegality requirement was derived in part from the passage in United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629, 1 S.Ct. 601, 27 L.Ed. 290 (1883), which explains that the only method by which a "private person can deprive another of the equal protection of the laws is by the commission of some offense against the laws which protect the rights of persons, as by theft, burglary, arson, libel, assault, or murder." Id. at 643, 1 S.Ct. at 612, 27 L.Ed. at 295. In this way, McLellan limited the potentially boundless reach of the statute and provided meaning to the concept of a private impairment of constitutional rights. Therefore, McLellan resolved the difficulties perceived by the Dombrowski court and made its analysis unnecessary.
It cannot be gainsaid that the defendants' conspiracy comprehended an intent to violate the law independent of section 1985(3). The plaintiffs contend that the conspiracy was calculated to deprive them of the right to freely associate with other nonunion laborers. They have alleged and have sought to prove that the defendants conspired to accomplish this object by assaulting and beating them with wooden boards and iron bars; by destroying tools, equipment, and automobiles; and by overturning and setting fire to the Cross office trailer. The means adopted by the conspirators to deprive the plaintiffs of their rights of free association encompass patent violations of both the civil and criminal laws of Texas. See, e. g., Tex.Penal Code Ann. &#x