Court Opinion

ID: 9636753
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:41:40.675606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:48.880386
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Bell:
The basic error in the majority opinion lies, I believe, in its failure to recognize that the injunction in this case was issued not only to restrain in the employer’s behalf a violation of the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act, but also to protect the employees from being threatened, molested or assaulted by the defendants. The decree of the lower Court dated March 28, 1951, provides, inter alia, as follows: “That the respondents . . . are herewith . .. enjoined . . . from threatening, molesting or abusing, insulting, assaulting or advising, instructing or encouraging others to threaten, molest, abuse, insult or assault, the complainants, their employees . .
Just because persons are members of a union gives them no right to threaten or assault, as they did in *464this case, their fellow Americans, even though the latter are not members of a union. These men and women, like all American citizens, are entitled to the protection of the law and of the Courts. This was not and is not a case, as the majority assert, merely for the advantage or protection of named employers; this injunction, we repeat, was issued, inter alia, to protect the employees from actual and threatened violence and they are entitled — as they request — to such continued protection.
Courts of Equity, for over a century, have enjoined threatened or actual violence and this poAver has always been sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States and by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: Allen-Bradley Local v. Wisconsin E. R. Board, 315 U. S. 740; Milk Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co., 312 U. S. 287; Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. United Electrical, 353 Pa. 446, 46 A. 2d 16; Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. v. U. S. W. of A., 353 Pa. 420, 45 A. 2d 857; see to the same effect: N. L. R. B. v. Fansteel Corp., 306 U. S. 240.*
This was not and is not a case of peaceful picketing — peaceful picketing, if conducted in an orderly manner and for a lawful purpose, is lawful: Wortex Mills v. Textile Workers, 369 Pa. 359, 85 A. 2d 851.
The poAver of a Court to vacate or modify an injunctive decree and the circumstances of when it should do so, are well stated in Ladner v. Siegel (No. 4), 298 Pa. 487, 496, 148 A. 699: “ 'The court which rendered a decree for an injunction may, . . . open, vacate or modify the same where the circumstances *465and situation of the parties are shown to have so changed as to make it just and equitable to do so’ (32 C. J. 389), or where the law has changed: 32 C. J. 407; Wetmore v. Law (N.Y), 34 Barb. 515; Weaver v. Mississippi Boom Co., 30 Minn. 477, 16 N.W. 269; Larson v. Minn. Northwestern Elec. Ry. Co., 136 Minn. 423, 162 N.W. 523; Emergency Hospital v. Stevens, 146 Md. 159, 126 Atl. 101.” And Mr. Justice Frankfurter said in Milk Wagon Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Dairies, 312 U. S. 287, 298; “(3) The injunction which we sustain is ‘permanent’ only for the temporary period for which it may last. It is justified only by the violence that induced it and only so long as it counteracts a continuing intimidation. Familiar equity procedure assure opportunity for modifying or vacating an injunction when its continuance is no longer warranted.”
Where, as here, the conduct of the defendants, which necessitated the injunction, was so violent and unjustifiable and the fears of the employees who were threatened or assaulted still persist, the Court below did not abuse its discretion in finding or concluding that lapse of time, a change of ownership of the business, and the union’s compliance with and good behavior during the period of the decree, were not sufficient to prove or to furnish reasonable grounds for believing that defendants’ unlawful conduct will not be resumed if the injunction to protect the employees from violence is dissolved. In this connection it is important to note that in the converse situation where a company sought a termination of a cease and desist order because of the same change of circumstances here alleged, namely, lapse of time, a change of union and the company’s compliance with and good behavior during the period of the order, the Supreme Court of the United States enforced and refused to terminate the desist Order: N. L. R. B. v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 303 U. S. *466261; N. L. R. B. v. Mexia, Textile Mills, 339 U. S. 563; N. L. R. B. v. Pool Mfg. Co., 339 U S. 577.
For these reasons I would affirm the Order of the Lower Court.

 On the subject of protection of rights of employees cf. also: Heasley v. Plasterers Assn., 324 Pa. 257, 260, 188 A. 206; McMenamin v. Philadelphia Transportation Co., 356 Pa. 88, 51 A. 2d 702; Erdman v. Mitchell, 207 Pa. 79, 56 A. 327.