Opinion ID: 2341461
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Picketing Coupled With Violence

Text: Appellants contend that the order below, prohibiting not only acts of violence but peaceful picketing as well, was a violation of their First Amendment rights. They point to numerous decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States sanctioning peaceful picketing or other similar conduct in a variety of contexts. See, inter alia, Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, 394 U.S. 147 (1969) (parading on city streets without permit required by local ordinance); Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308 (1968) (peaceful picketing in private shopping center open to public); Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946) (right to distribute religious literature in a company-owned town); A.F. of L. v. Swing, 312 U.S. 321 (1941) (peaceful picketing in industrial setting); Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 (1940) and Carlson v. California, 310 U.S. 106 (1940) (right to picket peacefully in a public place). While we of course recognize and are bound by these various holdings, we also know that the Supreme Court has never characterized picketing as pure speech. As recently, as 1968, in Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, supra, the Court recognized the mixture of elements of which picketing is comprised: . . . this Court has noted that picketing involves elements of both speech and conduct, . . . and has indicated that because of this intermingling of protected and unprotected elements, picketing can be subjected to controls that would not be constitutionally permissible in the case of pure speech. (citations omitted). Nevertheless, no case decided by this Court can be found to support the proposition that the nonspeech aspects of peaceful picketing are so great as to render the provisions of the First Amendment inapplicable to it altogether. 391 U.S. 313-4. In Milk Wagon Drivers Union of Chicago, Local 753 v. Meadowmoor Dairies, 312 U.S. 287 (1941), the United States Supreme Court was presented with a situation similar to that now before us. Under the then prevailing vendor system of distributing milk in Chicago, milk was sold by dairies to independent vendors who then resold to retailers. These vendors undercut the working standards which had been achieved by the Union in that area. In order to compel observance of their established standards, the Union brought pressure to bear on Meadowmoor Dairies. A suit brought by Meadowmoor eventually resulted in the Illinois Supreme Court upholding the grant of a permanent injunction prohibiting all union picketing, both peaceful and violent. The record contained the following acts of violence: more than fifty instances of window smashing; explosive bombs damaging the plants of Meadowmoor and another dairy using the vendor system; stench bombs dropped in five stores; 3 vendor trucks wrecked, one driven into the river, and one driver seriously injured; one store set afire; two vendor trucks burned; a storekeeper and truck driver severely beaten; workers held at gunpoint and beaten while being told to join the Union. In upholding the right of the state court to prohibit even peaceful picketing in these circumstances, Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, writing for the Court, said: It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guaranty of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guaranty of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution.. . . [A]cts which in isolation are peaceful may be part of a coercive thrust when entangled with acts of violence. In such a setting it could justifiably be concluded that the momentum of fear generated by past violence would survive even though future picketing might be wholly peaceful. So the Supreme Court of Illinois found. We cannot say that such a finding so contradicted experience as to warrant our rejection. Nor can we say that it was written into the Fourteenth Amendment that a state through its courts cannot base protection against future coercion on an inference of the continuing threat of past misconduct. 312 U.S. at 293-295. Since 1941, the Supreme Court has not had occasion to reapply its holding in Meadowmoor. The decision, however, has been alluded to in a number of its cases, including several recent ones postdating crystallization of the preemption doctrine; Carroll v. Commissioners, 393 U.S. 175 (1968); United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715 (1966); Youngdahl v. Rainfair, 355 U.S. 131 (1957); Cafeteria Union v. Angelos, 320 U.S. 293 (1943). The Meadowmoor holding was accepted in Pennsylvania before preemption: Wilkes Sportswear v. ILGWU, 380 Pa. 164, 110 A. 2d 418 (1955); Wortex Mills v. Textile Workers, 369 Pa. 359, 85 A. 2d 85 (1952); and it has been followed in other jurisdictions: See, e.g., Machesky v. Bizzell, 414 F. 2d 283 (5th Cir. 1969); United Aircraft Corp. v. International Association of Machinists, 161 Conn. 79, 285 A. 2d 330 (1971), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 1016, 92 S. Ct. 675 (1972); Local #612, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. Bowman Trans Co., Inc., 276 Ala. 563, 165 So. 2d 113 (1964); Angle v. Owsley, 332 S.W. 2d 457 (Mo. 1959); Smith v. F. & C. Engineering Co., 225 Ark. 688, 285 S.W. 2d 100 (1955); Local Union #858 v. Jiammas, 211 Ark. 352, 200 S.W. 2d 763 (1947). Appellants have cited us to no case, nor has our research discovered any, which in any way impugns the current validity of the Meadowmoor doctrine. We hold, accordingly, that Meadowmoor retains its vitality in Pennsylvania. The lower court in this case, no doubt with one eye to the Meadowmoor decision, was thus fully warranted in enjoining all picketing because defendants' picketing has been enmeshed with violence, threats of violence, harassment, intimidation, vandalism and destruction of property, creating an imminently dangerous and aggravated situation. . . . [Their] conduct has generated a momentum of fear which continues even in the absence of picketing. If the defendants are permitted to resume picketing in the foreseeable future, it is inevitable that violence will reoccur. On appeal from the grant or refusal of a preliminary injunction, our scope of review is clear. We look not to the merits of the case, but to discern whether any apparently reasonable grounds exist to justify the action below; if so, the decree will be affirmed unless the record reveals palpable legal error. See, e.g., City Line Open Hearth, Inc., supra, 413 Pa. at 436. We think that the evidence adduced below amply supports the court's findings. In the first six months of 1972, appellants were responsible for at least four separate incidents of violence causing close to $500,000 in property damage. Half a dozen employees of local contractors were seriously injured by members of the appellant unions and numerous threats emanated from the same sources. Appellants contend that there was no evidence specifically linking them with many of the alleged acts of misconduct. We think the record is to the contrary. Again a passage from Justice FRANKFURTER'S opinion in Meadowmoor is apposite: These acts of violence are neither episodic nor isolated. Judges need not be so innocent of the actualities of such an industrial conflict as this record discloses as to find in the Constitution a denial of the right of Illinois to conclude that the use of force on such a scale was not the conduct of a few irresponsible outsiders. The Fourteenth Amendment still leaves the state ample discretion in dealing with manifestations of force in the settlement of industrial conflicts. And in exercising its power a state is not to be treated as though the technicalities of the laws of agency were written into the Constitution. . . . It is true of a union as of an employer that it may be responsible for acts which it has not expressly authorized or which might not be attributable to it on strict application of the rules of respondeat superior. [citing cases]. Meadowmoor, supra, 312 U.S. at 295. We agree with the lower court that, as in Meadowmoor, defendants' actions involved more than a few isolated incidents of misconduct; rather it demonstrated a pattern of violence coupled with intimidation, harassment, and fear which would inevitably turn even peaceful picketing to violence. While the number of incidents, the total property damage, and the injuries inflicted in this case may fall short of those in Meadowmoor, it must be borne in mind that defendants' conduct transpired during the short period of six months, while the dairy workers in Meadowmoor wreaked their havoc over four years. The intensity of the violence here is at least as great, if not greater, than was that in Meadowmoor. See also Local #612, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. Bowman Trans. Co., Inc., supra. The facts of this case are readily distinguishable from Wilkes Sportswear v. ILGWU, 380 Pa. 164, 110 A. 2d 418 (1955), where our court modified a lower court injunction to permit peaceful picketing of the plaintiff's premises. The acts of violence complained of in Wilkes were characterized as episodic rather than continuous. Little property damage was involved; no serious injuries were reported; the main objection was that pickets blocked the entrances to plaintiff's plant and directed obscene and profane language to its employees. Compare also, Youngdahl v. Rainfair, supra. We hold, therefore, that even defendants' peaceful picketing, indistinguishable and inseparable as it was from acts of violence, is not the type of activity which is protected by the First Amendment; along with and because of the violence which accompanied it, picketing itself was a proper subject for this preliminary injunctive relief. Appellants contend that the lower court was deprived of jurisdiction by the Labor Anti-Injunction Act, supra. We have already (see pages 205-6, supra) equated section 206d(d) of the Anti-Injunction Act with the violence exception to federal preemption in labor disputes. Extending the analogy only slightly, we have little difficulty concluding that peaceful picketing which is undistinguishable from violence for First Amendment and preemption purposes is by the same token within the purview of conduct enjoinable by the state courts under § 206d(d). Cf. Link Belt Company v. Local Union No. 118 of American Federation of Technical Engineers, 415 Pa. 122, 202 A. 2d 314 (1964); Fountain Hill Underwear Mills v. Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, 393 Pa. 385, 143 A. 2d 354 (1958).