Opinion ID: 1545493
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Complaints Regarding Hearing

Text: Respondents have given us 46 pages of printed brief and several times that quantity of references to printed record to show that their constitutional rights of due process of law were violated because the hearing was not full and fair. With the fundamental assumption that the respondents were entitled to fair play there can be no dispute. Some of the points, urged, however, hardly reach the status of objections which might be urged under the most technical and formal review by an appellate court of a trial at common law. We shall not lengthen this opinion by stating these in extenso. The first is the objection that respondents' motions and arguments were heard off the record. Presumably the most this can show is bias, because while the statute requires testimony to be recorded it does not require the perpetuation in a type-written record of everything that lawyers say. Nor do we know any precept of constitutional law to demand otherwise. In the second place, the point made must refer to arguments alone because we do not find instances where the motions themselves are not recorded. There was an abundance of argument at the hearing and the transcript is so full of it that it is sometimes difficult to find questions asked and the answers given by the witnesses. At times there were four attorneys all making objections and each presenting arguments in support thereof. This matter of the record of argument was surely one to be controlled by the discretion of the examiner and a reading of the record does not show us that he abused that discretion. Counsel complain also about the action of the examiner with regard to ordering adjournments, although in fairness it should be said that they do not claim that treatment on this score did more than cause personal inconvenience to them. Personal inconvenience to counsel can hardly be classified as lack of due process of law. In reality we believe this point has been made to lead to the next one, which is respondents' complaint that the examiner showed personal hostility towards and made attacks upon their counsel. The hearing in this case, not unlike other law suits, was not conducted in a uniform atmosphere of urbanity. We do not get the impression that counsel was setting out to induce prejudicial error on the part of the examiner. But objections were made thick and fast. The atmosphere was confusing and occasionally things were said that were not conducive to dignified and orderly procedure. If the examiner was at times unduly severe with counsel it may be said that counsel were at times lacking in observing proprieties to the examiner. We find nothing on this point for reversal. Equally without merit is the complaint that the Board's counsel was permitted to control the proceedings. Considerable stress is placed on rulings regarding leading questions. A short answer might be made that this is a matter considered within the control of the trial judge in an ordinary law suit. 3 Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed. 1940, §§ 770, 776. The examiner in a less formal administrative hearing surely has no less discretion in this regard. Furthermore, we do not agree with respondents in their complaint concerning the nature of numerous questions to which they referred in their argument. They characterize a great many as leading which do not seem so to us at all. Nor do we see eye to eye with them concerning what witnesses were hostile or unwilling. Mr. Blake, for instance, president of Cornell, from his very position in the controversy would seem to us to be the type of witness to whom questions of the cross-examination type would be appropriately directed. We doubt whether respondents intend to complain so much of this as of alleged discrimination in restricting their own witnesses. We think, on the whole, however, that examination of witnesses to which reference is made in the record shows that the trial examiner allowed cross-examination by respondents to go very far. We do not find any instance where he finally cut if off in abuse of discretion on his part. The respondents contend that the order compelling them to reveal in advance the purpose of certain questions was prejudicial in that it compelled them to disclose their plans of defense, thus enabling the Board attorney and the examiner to frustrate those plans and curtail the proof. We do not find, however, any record of the appropriate motion to disqualify the examiner for bias and our statement upon that subject made in the case of National Labor Relations Board v. Baldwin Locomotive Works, 3 Cir., 128 F.2d 39, is sufficient comment upon this point. The same can be said concerning the objection that the examiner protected and favored the Board's witnesses. Finally, complaint is made concerning the procedure in issuing subpoenas. The rule of the Board, at the time of this hearing, required applications for subpoenas to be timely and to specify the name of the witness and the facts to be proved by him. [6] Respondents criticize the procedure as cumbersome and creaky. That it is less convenient for a party than the prompt issuing of a subpoena upon request may be conceded. On the other hand, the Board is a public agency and is responsible for performing its public functions. This means that the inquiry in a given case must be kept within reasonable limits and the requirement that a party disclose what he wants to prove by a witness before a subpoena is issued for him is doubtless designed to accomplish that result. The rule has met severe criticism. Inland Steel Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 7 Cir., 109 F.2d 9, 18-21; dissenting opinion in Bethlehem Steel Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, supra, 74 App.D.C. 52, 120 F.2d at pages 659-661; Note (1940) 53 Harv.L.Rev. 842, 848. On the other hand, courts in several Circuits, while refraining from unqualified endorsement of the rule, have refused to find it violative of due process where no prejudice has been shown in a given case. National Labor Relations Board v. Blackstone Mfg. Co., Inc., 2 Cir., 1941, 123 F.2d 633; Bethlehem Steel Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, supra; National Labor Relations Board v. Ed. Friedrich, Inc., 5 Cir., 1940, 116 F.2d 888; National Labor Relations Board v. Dahlstrom Metallic Door Co., 2 Cir., 1940, 112 F.2d 756; North Whittier Heights Citrus Ass'n v. National Labor Relations Board, 9 Cir., 1940, 109 F.2d 76. The instances of the application of the rule in the litigation under consideration show some inconvenience and some understandable exasperation, but nothing which rises to the formidability of prejudice. One instance has to do with the witness Carey, who was general president of United. However, Carey came to the hearing pursuant to subpoena. The complaint made by respondents really is that the examiner did not interpret the order to call for what counsel insist Carey should have produced. In any event, counsel's protest did bring from United's attorney records which are admitted to satisfy the subpoena. Another source of complaint involves the case of the editor of the Peoples Press, the official organ of the United. Here, too, the trouble was not in getting the subpoena for it had been granted. Respondents' point is that it was dishonored by the recipient and that the examiner would do nothing about it. Be that as it may, the Board's counsel was willing to stipulate and did stipulate all possible facts to which the witness, if present, could have testified. A third instance has to do with the order for the production of the records of the employer of one Anne Coley in connection with her earnings after discharge by respondents. The Board has dismissed the complaint with reference to her. Obviously, no prejudice is present here. On another occasion counsel for respondents made a point of getting into the record his insistence upon subpoenas, rejecting the suggestion from the Board's counsel that the witnesses would be produced without them. And again, at other times to which reference is made the evidence for which subpoenas were asked was readily stipulated. We have checked each instance of complaint made by respondents and find no one of them to contain anything that rises above the point of petty annoyance. Whatever may be the criticism of what is perhaps a cumbersome rule there is nothing in this case upon which the respondents may attack it as failing to give them due process of law.