Opinion ID: 1408111
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Those Bound by the Preliminary Injunction

Text: (18) Defendants contend that they may not be bound by the injunction except on proof that each possessed a specific intent to further an unlawful aim embraced by [the gang]. The quoted language is the test formulated by the United States Supreme Court in Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. at page 925 [102 S.Ct. at page 3432], as being required to sustain damages liability against individual members of a group. Claiborne Hardware is distinguishable on its facts. Defendants there were members of a local chapter of a national civil rights organization. Each was held liable in state court proceedings for business losses suffered by the plaintiff merchants over the seven-year duration of a civil rights boycott sponsored by the organization. Although the boycott was for the most part peaceable and law abiding, there were sporadic incidents of violence by some members, resulting in economic losses to the plaintiffs. Vacating the state court damages award, the high court held that mere association with [the] group  absent a specific intent to further an unlawful aim embraced by that group  is an insufficient predicate for liability. ( Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. at pp. 925-926 [102 S.Ct. at p. 3432].) The state courts, the Supreme Court reasoned, had relied on isolated acts of violence during a limited period to uphold [plaintiffs'] recovery of all business losses sustained over a 7-year span.... The court's judgment `screens reality' and cannot stand. ( Id. at p. 924 [102 S.Ct. at p. 3431], italics and fns. omitted.) Unlike the record in Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. 886, the evidence submitted by the City in support of the preliminary injunction here presents a portrait of gang affiliated youths whose collective activities, within the four-block area of Rocksprings, create and sustain the urban war zone described at the outset of this opinion. The precedents that control the reach of injunctive relief in such circumstances are Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co., supra, 312 U.S. 287, and Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753. In Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co., supra, 312 U.S. 287, 291 [61 S.Ct. 552, 554] (hereafter Drivers Union ), the trial court issued a preliminary injunction restraining all union conduct, violent and peaceful, arising out of a labor dispute. The union protested, arguing the decree violated the First Amendment rights of its members by enjoining acts of peaceful picketing. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the broad scope of the interlocutory decree and directed that a permanent injunction, restraining peaceful as well as violent acts by union members, be entered as well. The United States Supreme Court upheld the injunction, framing the case as one where the question ... is whether a state can choose to authorize its courts to enjoin acts of picketing in themselves peaceful when they are enmeshed with contemporaneously violent conduct which is concededly outlawed. ( Id. at p. 292 [61 S.Ct. at p. 554].) As in Drivers Union, supra, 312 U.S. 287, here the injunction is confined, encompassing conduct occurring within a narrow, four-block residential neighborhood. As in Drivers Union, it deals with this narrow area precisely because the coercive conduct affected it. An injunction so adjusted to a particular situation is in accord with the settled practice of equity ... [and] ... must be read in the context of its circumstances. ( Id. at p. 298 [61 S.Ct. at p. 557].) As in Drivers Union, the high court in Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753, 759-760 [114 S.Ct. 2516, 2522], upheld an injunction directed against congregating, picketing, patrolling, demonstrating or entering within 36 feet of a health clinic in which therapeutic abortions were performed. That provision of the decree, along with another setting restrictions on noise, was directed not only at the anti-abortion organizations themselves, but at allied organizations and  their officers, agents, members, employees and servants, and ... all persons acting in concert or participation with them, or on their behalf. ( Id. at p. 759, fn. 1 [114 S.Ct. at p. 2521] italics added.) Both Drivers Union, supra, 312 U.S. 287, and Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753, thus stand for the proposition that, in a proper case, an organization and its individual members are enjoinable without meeting the specific intent to further unlawful group aims standard applied in Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. 886. Certainly that proposition comprehends paragraphs (a) and (k) of the preliminary injunction, the only two provisions now before us. For we have already concluded that the conduct proscribed by those two provisions  appearing publicly in Rocksprings with others known to a defendant to be gang members, and harassing area residents known to a defendant to have complained to public authorities about gang activities in Rocksprings  are activities integral to the public nuisance that afflicts Rocksprings and do not implicate protected First Amendment conduct. (See Claiborne Hardware, supra, at pp. 918-920 [102 S.Ct. at pp. 3428-3429].) That being the case, the interim relief entered by the superior court is indistinguishable from time-honored equitable practice applicable to labor unions, abortion protesters or other identifiable groups. Because such groups can act only through the medium of their membership, ... it has been a common practice to make the injunction run also to classes of persons through whom the enjoined person may act, such as agents, servants, employees, aiders [and] abettors.... ( Berger v. Superior Court (1917) 175 Cal. 719, 721 [167 P. 143, 15 A.L.R. 373]; see also In re Lennon (1897) 166 U.S. 548, 554 [17 S.Ct. 658, 660, 41 L.Ed. 1110] [To render a person amenable to an injunction it is neither necessary that he should have been a party to the suit in which the injunction was issued, nor to have been actually served with a copy of it, so long as he appears to have had actual notice.]; cf. Fed. Rules Civ. Proc., rule 65(d), 28 U.S.C. [injunction is binding only upon the parties to the action, their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and upon those persons in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of the order by personal service or otherwise].) We see nothing in this case  where instead of naming the gang organizations themselves as parties, the City named as individual defendants all 38 gang members it was able to identify  that removes it from the usual rule applied in Berger v. Superior Court, supra, 175 Cal. 719, and many other cases. The City's evidence in support of preliminary equitable relief demonstrated that it was the gang itself, acting through its membership, that was responsible for creating and maintaining the public nuisance in Rocksprings. Because the City could have named the gangs themselves as defendants and proceeded against them, its decision to name individual gang members instead does not take the case out of the familiar rule that both the organization and the members through which it acts are subject to injunctive relief. For present purposes, it is enough to observe that there was sufficient evidence before the superior court to support the conclusions that the gang and its members present in Rocksprings were responsible for the public nuisance, that each of the individual defendants either admitted gang membership or was identified as a gang member, and that each was observed by police officials in the Rocksprings neighborhood. Although all but three of the eleven defendants who chose to contest entry of the preliminary injunction  Miguel Moreno, Rafael Ruiz, and Blanca Gonzalez  were shown to have committed acts, primarily drug related, comprising specific elements of the public nuisance, such individualized proof is not a condition to the entry of preliminary relief based on a showing that it is the gang, acting through its individual members, that is responsible for the conditions prevailing in Rocksprings. Additional proceedings will be required to enforce the specific terms of the preliminary injunction. Should contempt proceedings ensue, each individual defendant will have an opportunity to contest any claim by the City that he or she has violated specific terms of the preliminary injunction.