Court Opinion

ID: 9639909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:51:32.831041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:22.770452
License: Public Domain

STEPHENS, Associate Justice:
I concur in the view of the court that the American Federation of Labor had power to determine, and validly determined, in 1933 that teamsters and chauffeurs in the brewery industry came within the jurisdiction of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Chauffeurs; and I concur in the view of the court that the case involves a labor dispute within the meaning of that term in the NorrisLaGuardia Act, and in the view that the finding that the public officers charged with the duty to protect complainants’ property and property rights were unable to furnish adequate protection against violence is without substantial support in the evidence; and I therefore agree that the injunction ought not to have issued and that the judgment should be reversed.
I disagree, however, with the statement of the court that there must, in order to
support jurisdiction under the’ NorrisLaGuardia Act, be a formal finding that due and personal notice had been given to the chief of the public officials, of the county and city within which unlawful acts have been threatened or committed, charged with the duty to protect complainants’ property. I think that if a record showed such notice given, or showed that such chief of public officials had actually appeared and testified in the case, the requirement of the "statute would be satisfied even though there was no formal finding.
I disagree also with the implication in the decision of the court to the effect that if the findings of fact required by the Norris-LaGuardia Act ' were insufficient, when filed, to warrant the issuance of an injunction, they could not thereafter be amended so as to make them sufficient. Rule 52(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for the District Courts of the United States permits the amendment of findings. By this I do not mean to suggest that a trial court should issue an injunction without sufficient findings; but in my view, if it should improvidently so do, so that the injunction was invalid, it would not thereby be disabled later to make proper findings and thus to validate the injunction from the time the valid findings were made.