Court Opinion

ID: 9458907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:05:09.087454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:56.261675
License: Public Domain

GIBBONS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This is an appeal from a dismissal by the district court pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), Fed.R.Civ.P., for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. The appellants are two New Jersey corporations engaged in the tire sales and service business. According to the complaint, all their production and service employees are represented by the intervenor defendant, Teamsters Local Union No. 676. On May 14, 1971, upon the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement which had been in effect since May 15, 1968, the local struck as a *923result of the parties’ failure to reach a new agreement. According to the complaint, that strike was still in progress when the complaint was filed on June 10, 1971. The only hearing was that held on June 24, 1971. That hearing was on the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, in support of which the plaintiffs were prepared to offer testimony. At the hearing the intervening defendant, Local Union No. 676, was permitted to intervene; the Attorney General, representing the public official defendants, was permitted to make an oral motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1337, upon which the court never ruled. The intervening defendant was permitted to make an oral motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. In advancing the Rule 12(b)(6) motion, counsel for the local relied upon the opinion of the First Circuit in ITT Lamp Division v. Minter, 435 F.2d 989 (1st Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 933, 91 S.Ct. 1526, 28 L.Ed.2d 868 (1971); although, as that opinion makes clear, the district court decision reviewed was the denial of a preliminary injunction after an evidentiary hearing. The district court below declined to take testimony, and dismissed solely upon the basis of the allegations in the complaint. Thus, assuming that the case is still justiciable, our review would be confined to the legal sufficiency of the allegations of the complaint, in particular the allegations in paragraph 14:
“Plaintiffs believe and therefore aver that the payment by the State of New Jersey through its instrumentalities and political subdivisions, pursuant to the aforesaid interpretative regulation, of public assistance and public welfare benefits to individuals and the families of individuals who voluntarily leave their employment to directly engage in and actively participate in an economic strike against their employer, interferes with and infringes upon free collective bargaining as guaranteed to Plaintiffs by Congress under the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 141 et seq.; constitutes an intrusion by the State of New Jersey into the field of labor-management relations which Congress has pre-empted and occupied to the full extent of its powers; and, accordingly, violates Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States.’’
At the hearing the plaintiffs were prepared to offer testimony in support of their claim that the availability of welfare benefits for strikers did in fact interfere with and infringe upon free collective bargaining. The absence of such proof at the hearing upon the preliminary injunction was relied upon by the Minter court as one reason, among others, for affirming the denial of a preliminary injunction in that case. Here, the plaintiffs were prepared to offer such evidence, but the court ruled that the complaint failed to state a cause of action. Reading the complaint as a whole, and particularly paragraph 14, it is perfectly clear that the gravamen of the charge is that the availability of strike benefits adds the economic power of the state to the union side, and thereby interferes with the collective bargaining relationship.
Thus, this controversy is moot only (1) if welfare benefits to strikers are no longer available, or (2) if there is no longer a collective bargaining relationship which can be affected by such availability. It is clear from the briefs filed on behalf of the public defendants that welfare benefits are still available to strikers in New Jersey, and that the state has no present intention of changing its policy with respect to such payments. Thus, the only basis upon which this controversy may be classified as moot is a finding that there is no longer a collective bargaining relationship which can be affected by the acknowledged continued availability of welfare benefits for strikers.
Since no testimony was taken in the district court, the record is almost total*924ly devoid of any facts with respect to the actual status of the collective bargaining relationship. The judges in the majority act upon the conflicting representations of counsel as to the date of termination of the strike. The opinion states:
“The union states that the strike ‘ended immediately prior to the June 24, 1971 hearing.’ The employers allege that the ‘employees did not return to work until June 28, 1971.’ Under either factual situation, a new contract having been accepted and ratified, it is clear that the labor dispute under-girding this challenge to the New Jersey programs had been concluded before the trial judge dismissed the action and long before appeals were filed or argued in this Court.” (footnote omitted)
With deference, it is a long logical leap from the very little information furnished to us upon which counsel agree, and the conclusion drawn by the majority. Among the unanswered questions are these:
A. There is a contract, but is it of long or short duration ?
B. If it is of short duration, will collective bargaining over terms of its renewal, extension or modification continue while it is in effect?
C. Whether it is of long or of short duration, does it have a binding grievanee/arbitration and no-strike provision, or is the union free to strike over grievances ?
D. Will the availability of welfare benefits to strikers have any effect upon the bargaining relationship in any of the above situations?
The plaintiffs vigorously assert that the bargaining relationship is still affected by the availability of strike benefits. If the record established that the parties were in year one of a three-year labor contract with a no-strike clause, I would agree that the controversy might be too speculative to warrant decision. Short of that situation, the impact on the collective bargaining relationship of the availability of welfare benefits to strikers may be quite real and immediate. But we simply do not know what the situation is because the plaintiffs were deprived of the opportunity of making a record in the district court. The analytical unsoundness of the majority’s position is reflected in its reliance, in support of its mootness conclusion, on that very deprivation. The opinions states:
“The lack of immediacy and solidity of interest necessary to support jurisdiction is reflected here in the atmosphere of abstraction, ambiguity, and conjecture surrounding this matter.”
If there is abstraction and ambiguity it arises from the absence of a record. If there is conjecture, the conjecture is by the majority of this panel. Their conclusion that there is no collective bargaining relationship which may be affected by the availability of welfare benefits to strikers is entirely conjectural. Appellate decision making cannot be reduced to scholastic disputation about rules to be drawn from previously decided cases. It must first of all be grounded in facts. There is no more justification for making a hypothetical or conjectural decision upon an issue of alleged mootness than upon an issue going to the merits.
This case can be regarded as having been made moot by the termination of the strike only if we construe the complaint as addressed to the protection of the integrity of the collective bargaining relationship only during the pendency of a strike. But it cannot fairly be so construed. Collective bargaining over contract terms more often than not goes on for months before a strike. Collective bargaining over grievances may go on continuously. The complaint seeks to *925unfetter the collective bargaining relationship from alleged interference by New Jersey. The relationship for which the protection of the court has been sought is a continuing one. See NLRB v. Newark Morning Ledger, 120 F.2d 262, 267 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 314 U.S. 693, 62 S.Ct. 363, 86 L.Ed. 554 (1941).
In the context of the protection of a continuing relationship perhaps only two of the many decisions discussed in the majority opinion are relevant, Fishgold v. Sullivan Drydock & Repair Corp., 328 U.S. 275, 66 S.Ct. 1105, 90 L.Ed. 1230 (1946); Bus Employees v. Missouri, 374 U.S. 74, 83 S.Ct. 1657, 10 L.Ed.2d 763 (1963).
In Fishgold a veteran was laid off by his employer in compliance with the seniority provisions of a collective bargaining agreement. He sued the employer for damages and for a declaratory judgment that his layoff was in violation of Section 8(c) of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, 50 U.S.C.App. § 301. The labor union intervened, taking a position in defense of the validity of contract seniority provisions. The district court awarded money damages to the veteran, and only the union appealed. Meanwhile, the one-year statutory veteran’s preference period for the original veteran plaintiff’s employment had expired. The Supreme Court held that the union, because of the ongoing relationship between it and the employer by virtue of the labor contract, had standing to appeal. Since the contract was still in existence, the case was not moot. Fishgold is, of course, only authority for the instant case by way of analogy. But the analogy is closer than in any of the cases upon which the judges in the majority rely.
Bus Employees, as the majority opinion points out, dealt with the validity of a Missouri statute which gave the governor of that state the authority to seize the facilities of a public utility in the event of a strike, and to operate them in the public interest. The statute was challenged on the same basis as is the New Jersey regulation on welfare benefits to strikers challenged here, interference with a relationship regulation of which has been preempted by paramount federal law. While the case was on appeal the governor terminated the seizure. Missouri then urged mootness, relying on Oil Workers Unions v. Missouri, 361 U.S. 363, 80 S.Ct. 391, 4 L. Ed.2d 373 (1960), a case involving the identical statute. The Court declined to dismiss as moot, and held the Missouri statute unconstitutional. It distinguished Oil Workers because in that case both the labor dispute and the seizure had ended, whereas in Bus Employees the strike had not ended and the availability of the seizure device as an available means of terminating it had an ongoing effect. Bus Employees, again, is only analogous authority since the plaintiffs sought the protection of the right to strike, a right lawful under the National Labor Relations Act which Missouri attempted to make unlawful. But on the mootness issue the case is quite closely in point, for it recognizes that the availability of state interference can have an ongoing effect upon the collective bargaining relationship, and that a controversy over such availability is not moot, as long as the affected relationship exists.
The issues in this case are of considerable public interest, and likely to recur. Overanxiety on the part of the federal courts to find such cases non-justi-ciable is not consistent with our judicial obligations. As Judge Coffin said in a similar context:
“Although the strike against ITT was subsequently settled, the issue, we know from our own experience, has earlier vainly sought appellate review in this circuit and is likely again to be raised, bringing it close to the ‘recurring question’ category, where significant public rights are involved and court review ought not, if possible, be avoided. See So. Pac. Terminal Co. v. I.C.C., 219 U.S. 498, 515-516, 31 S.Ct. 279, 55 L.Ed. 310 (1911) and Marc-*926hand v. Director, U. S. Probation Office, 421 F.2d 331 (1st Cir. 1970).” ITT Lamp Division v. Minter, supra, 435 F.2d at 991.
We cannot without a record properly hold that this case is moot. At the same time, since there is no record, we cannot rule out the possibility that the situation of the parties has so changed as to render the case moot. The issues involved are complex and their proper resolution far from clear. Compare ITT Lamp Division v. Minter, supra, with John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Commissioner of Insurance, 349 Mass. 390, 208 N.E.2d 516 (1965). I would remand the case to the district court for a hearing to determine first, the actual collective bargaining relationship between the parties, and next, in what way, factually, that actual relationship is affected, if at all, by the availability of welfare benefits to strikers. Only with such a record can we properly decide if there is still a genuine case or controversy, and if so, how it should be resolved.