Court Opinion

ID: 9658840
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:17:44.528221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:00.338643
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(dissenting). To the facts stated in companion opinions I can add but little. Our disagreements lie in the legal effect of those facts.
This case presents 2 principal issues: First, the effect in law of an order of liquidation, executed and implemented; second, the effect of such order and implementation upon the unemployment-compensation status of the plaintiffs, who had been out on strike, as compared with other employees, who had not.
The crux of the latter issue is simply the equality, under the law, of workmen with respect to unemployment compensation. The company sought to establish 2 categories of employees, as to one of which benefits were payable upon the company’s liquidation, but as to the other of which benefits were to be denied. Those entitled, under the company’s theory, were those people who “had continued to work during the strike,” the clerical, supervisory, and salaried employees. Counsel continues, “They were not members of the bargaining unit, with the exception of about 16 that are shown on an exhibit who were engaged in maintenance. Those people the *636company had deemed its employees throughout the strike from May 2d right up to August 12th, when the layoff started, and I think the company was very proper in certifying them for benefits under the act.”*
But there was another group of employees.- These had been out on strike. The company contended that it was an “illegal” strike, that they had voluntarily left their work, that they were guilty of misconduct, that they themselves had thus “automatically” terminated the employer-employee relationship, and, hence, that they were not entitled to unemployment compensation. (At no time, the company is careful to point out, had it attempted to discharge these employees.) . With respect to such employees, however, the appeal board correctly ruled that “the alleged ‘illegality’ of the work stoppage arising out of a labor dispute may not be the basis for considering the participation of the claimants in the strike which began on May 2, 1955, as a termination of the employer-employee relation existing between the claimants and the employer herein for the purposes of the Michigan employment security act.”
Despite this ruling that the strikers remained employees, the appeal board holds that they are not entitled, upon the liquidation of the company, to unemployment compensation. Yet the record shows that some 51. other employees have been approved *637therefor by the commission.* The company interposed no objection to such payment. In fact it affirmatively stated to the commisison that (as to such employees) “we have no objection” to the payment of unemployment compensation. The latter group should, nothing countervailing appearing, have it. The plant was in liquidation. All employer-employee relationships were terminated. But why deny it to the former strikers'?
This case is a blood brother to Cassar v. Employment Security Commission, 343 Mich 380, and much, of what we said there, dissenting, is equally applicable here. In each case unemployment compensation is denied as a punishment. In each case the result is reached through the application to labor of an asserted rule of law not applied elsewhere in the law. In Cassar it was that a work stoppage, alleged to be in breach of contract, should he construed, not as coming under the labor dispute clause of the unemployment compensation act, hut as “misconduct.” Yet if this doctrine, that a breach of contract is misconduct, were applied generally in our law it would make misfeasants, and wrongfully so, of substantial numbers of our business population. In the case before us the asserted rule, not applied elsewhere as we shall see, is that an admitted, accomplished act {i.e., liquidation) shall not have its normal legal results if the hoard chooses to construe it as a maneuvering device, a mere strategem.
As to the misconduct aspect of the company’s argument, there is no need that I restate my views thereon. They are fully set forth in my dissenting opin*638ion in Gassar, supra. The issue of the asserted illegality of the strike, however, and the effect of such asserted illegality upon the right to unemployment compensation, requires similar examination. The company asserts that the strike was illegal, pointing out that timely notice was not sent to the Federal mediation and conciliation service and the State mediation agency, as required by the Federal act.* The asserted justification for such failure we need not explore, since even if we assume that notice was not given, and, moreover, that it was unjustifiably withheld, the penalty therefor is stated in the Taft-Hartley act itself, namely, that the strikers shall lose their remedies under sections 8, 9 and 10 of such act.† I find it nowhere stated, either specifically or by fair intendment, that, in addition, those failing to take the procedural step listed shall forfeit their benefits under the applicable unemployment compensation act. It would be entirely possible, of course, for our people, acting through their legislative representatives, to provide that labor’s unjustified failure (or, indeed, any failure) to make a prescribed notification in the course of a labor-management controversy would deprive all strikers of later benefits should the plant be liquidated as an outgrowth of the controversy. This would, in truth, be a potent weapon, since its force would be exerted primarily upon the wives and children of the strikers. It has not yet been employed.
We hold again, as was held, dissenting, in Gassar, supra, that the unemployment compensation act is not to be used as a means of punishment or of penal*639ty for alleged violations of either contractual or statutory provisions.
As to the liquidation issue, if the plant, in truth, went into liquidation it was no longer an operating ■concern suffering a strike but a defunct company which had had a strike. That the liquidation decision might at some later date, a year hence, a month, or even a week, be revoked makes it nonetheless under liquidation in the interim. It cannot, as to the act before us, be construed as liquidated for certain corporate purposes and employees but nonliquidated for other purposes and other employees.
We will look, then, at the liquidation: The notice we need not repeat. It is set forth in full in my Brother Black’s opinion. It was clear and unequivocal. But the company did not stop with notice alone. There was immediate implementation thereof. All pumping in the mines was stopped. The removal of equipment from the mines was commenced. There is no need to further detail precise action taken because the defendant company itself admits that liquidation order “became effective immediately.” It was, defendant company states, seriously made, in good faith, and it was implemented.
Why, then, is not the employer-employee relationship terminated? Because, holds the appeal board, “these actions must be considered as bargaining tactics.”
The board has been betrayed into error. In the first place, I find not one scintilla of evidence that the liquidation was merely a bargaining tactic. The company insists that it was done in good faith and effective at once. The claimants agree. From whence comes, then, this “bargaining” business? Is it a question of fact? I find no such fact. Is it a question of law? Not one case has been cited to us supporting such a holding and our independent research has disclosed none. Thus the holding does *640violence both to the facts and to the law. But it does violence elsewhere, as well. However it be phrased-, whether expressed as the principle of “mutuality” in contracts, as “equality is equity” for the chancellor, or in the simple speech of the bulk of our people that it is a poor rule that does not work both ways, the underlying principle thus variously expressed is a part of our heritage' at the common law. Let us accept, then, for the moment, the board’s ruling that a liquidation is not a liquidation if it is a bargaining tactic. The same reasoning would suggest the conclusion that a strike is not a strike if it is a bargaining tactic. So, just as the plant was never liquidated, the strike never occurred. Did the whole thing ever happen? What would our Brethren now hold if the appeal board had said that these claimants had never been on strike at all because their work stoppage was merely a bargaining tactic ?
But even if we assume, with the board, that the company’s motive in so closing was for bargaining purposes only, and did not represent a final, good-faith going out of business, the assumption is irrelevant to the legal effect of what was done. The motive for the action taken is not important, nor is it an issue, nor does it control determination. The board has confused an unequivocal, admitted act with the motive therefor. Bargaining tactics are a commonplace in our economic society. Property is bought and sold daily for bargaining purposes. One’s purchase of a lot for the purpose of bargaining with the adjacent owner would not' relieve the purchaser of liability to the neighbor for trespass nor to the State for taxes. The reasons for a company’s making a purchase, opening a plant, selling its products, and, in due course, for its merger, consolidation, or liquidation do not control the legal effectiveness of the various actions taken. It has never, to our *641knowledge, elsewhere been held that title does not pass because a purchase is made for bargaining-purposes, or that a plant’s opening or closing was likewise ineffective for such reason. The law could, indeed, be so written. No transaction, no act, would have what we now regard as its normal legal effect if entered into for bargaining purposes. The difficulties thus invited we need not explore. Suffice to say our law is otherwise. It is precisely the fact that our law is otherwise that renders an act undertaken for bargaining purposes really effective as a bargaining instrument.
The proposition is one of widespread application. The motive causing the exercise of the will to do the act, the secret intent with which it may be done, are, in ordinary business transactions, not involving fraud or crime, immaterial and foreign to the common law. Labor law does not lack cases involving its application to the strike situation. Thus in Deshler Broom Factory v. Kinney, 140 Neb 889 (2 NW2d 332), it was argued by workmen seeking unemployment compensation that their concerted quitting of work and leaving the plant was not a labor-dispute for other reasons we need not here elaborate. The court simply held (p 893) that “disqualification under the act depends upon the fact of voluntary action and not the motives which brought it about.” Such was also the finding of the California court in Bodinson Manufacturing Co. v. California Employment Commission, 17 Cal2d 321, 328 (109 P2d 935): “In brief,” held the court, “disqualification * * * depends upon the fact of voluntary action, and not the motives which led to it.” These holdings are merely expressive of the common law. The appeal board is as powerless to disregard this fundamental legal principle as it would be to disregard the doctrine of consideration.
*642But, it is argued, the case of Unemployment Compensation Commission of Alaska v. Aragon, 329 US 143 (67 S Ct 245, 91 L ed 136), is authority for our .affirming of the action taken by the appeal board, ■and, in turn, by the circuit court. The difficulty with this case as authority for any principle of administrative law is that it applies 2 different and inconsistent “rules” within the same decision to the same legal proposition. On the question whether the labor dispute was in “active progress” it refuses to substitute its judgment for that of the commission. My Brother Black quotes the language employed (p 153) relating to “warrant in the record” and “reasonable basis in the law.” But as to the question of the situs of the dispute (on which the circuit court of appeals had reversed the commission) the court exercised its own judgment in these words (p 156): “We conclude that under the circumstances of this ease the dispute was ‘at the factory, establishment, or other premises’ in the sense intended by the territorial legislature.” This, it will be noted, is the court’s own determination of situs, not a reliance (as in the former question) upon the reasonableness of the commission’s determination. See Davis, Administrative Law, ch 20. Yet the facts as to each question (as distinguished from the legal effects of such facts) were not in dispute.
We do not, however, regard the long-debated issue ■of a court’s preclusion of judicial review of an agency ruling upon a matter of statutory interpretation, if it be reasonable, and have warrant in the record, as settled by the page 153 holding of Aragon, <or, indeed, any single decision before or since its date. Much has been written of the rational basis doctrine and Aragon does nothing to clarify the problem. Without tracing the doctrine, from the earlier holdings, and to make one selection from a long list, the case of National Labor Relations Board *643v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 US 111 (64 S Ct 851, 88 L ed 1170) gives it strong, bnt not conclusive,, support. Yet the court’s exercise of its own judgment, as involved in its holding on page 156, finds equally strong support in a similarly impressive list per contra, from which we may cite the case of Social Security Board v. Nierotko, 327 US 358 (66 S Ct 637, 90 L ed 718, 162 ALR, 1445). The comments upon Aragon found in Brannon v. Stark, 342 US 451, 484 (72 S Ct 433, 96 L ed 497), also tend to illumine its value as precedent in its own court of origin. The fact of the matter is that there is no> simple rule of thumb as to the reviewability of administrative determinations of statutory interpretation. The question arises in too many guises, ranging from specific orders to matters of general regulation, from (quasi) legislative rules to (quasi) judicial decisions, from interpretations of the agency’s jurisdiction to interpretations as to its choice of weapons once having assumed jurisdiction. Much of the current confusion in this area arises from our effort to make one suit of clothes fit all mankind.
Viewed, however, as a matter of judicial principle we must express the most profound misgivings as to the judicial course of action expressed on page 153 of Aragon, supra, if applied to the issue before us. Here it is no more than an abdication of our judicial function to approve an administrative tribunal’s decision merely if it involves a “reasonable” construction of a statute. Many constructions of a statute may be reasonable. We must do our best, with all possible aids, to find the correct one. Thus we cannot say that the narrow interpretation of our majority of the word “accident” in Wieda v. American Box Board Company, 343 Mich 182, involved an unreasonable construction of the statute, but it was clearly incorrect in that it did not reflect the intendment of *644the legislature in the act before us. The basic interpretation of a statute is a judicial act, confided in us by the Constitution. This duty, power, and privilege, cannot be usurped by others nor can it be abandoned by us. It was Mr. Justice Brandéis who phrased the doctrine with his usual felicity in the St. Joseph Stock Yards Case:* “The supremacy of law demands that there shall be opportunity to have some ■court decide whether an erroneous rule of law was applied.” In short, the administrative decision as to the interpretation of a statute may aid us but it uannot silence us.
It should be added on this topic, that even if we were foreclosed from judicial review, provided only that the board’s statutory interpretation found warrant in the record and a reasonable basis in the law, such foreclosure could not prevent our correction of the error of law committed by this board. Here we can find neither warrant in the record nor •a reasonable legal basis for a conclusion (that the liquidation was merely a bargaining liquidation) denied by both litigants, supported by no fact, and immaterial as a matter of law.
We must express, also, the most serious doubts as to the extent to which jury analogies should control our holdings with respect to the administrative process. At the extremes, such as, at one extreme, questions of simple fact,† or at the other (as here) clear questions of “law,” the jury analogies may be helpful. But with analogy the jury parallel exhausts its usefulness. Judicial interpretation of statutes delimiting the scope of review of the rulings of the ■administrative bodies is still in embryonic state and must not be currently frozen in any mold, partic*645ularly that of the jury. The jury and the administrative tribunal have different origins and serve different functions. Their areas of overlap are relatively narrow and should not be allowed to obscure their essential differences.
We are not disposed to dissect the remainder of the cases relied upon as authority for a contrary ■conclusion. They present, to our mind, varying shades of intensity as to the issue of causation for unemployment. The reasoning of some we would .accept. The reasoning of others we would reject. Their fact situations are widely disparate. Thus, in .Aragon, supra, supplies had been purchased and vessels prepared for a forthcoming operation which had to be abandoned because of the labor dispute. Likewise, in nonseafaring disputes, an employer may purchase supplies and materials of an intended job, •only to have the whole project cancelled because ■of a labor dispute. These are not liquidation cases. The difference .between suspension of a given operation and the effective liquidation of a plant is, conceivably, merely a question of degree, but equally so is the difference between temporary unconsciousness and death.
A final caveat. We would not be understood as holding that if an act, or a public announcement, is ambiguous we will not resort to all of the surrounding circumstances to determine its meaning. The point of this opinion has a different thrust: Here an employer admits doing an act and admits that it was immediately effective. Under these circumstances it is a manifest error of law for an administrative tribunal to deny such act its legal effect ■upon the ex post facto speculation, based upon its •success or failure, that the action was taken for its strategic effect. If the liquidation order had never •been “revoked” (the terminology of revocability is not ours but that of the -defendant company), if *646the plant were closed today, would the liquidation nevertheless have been held a mere bargaining device? In such event, for how long would the labor-dispute disqualification continue? As long as the plant remained closed? Our Brethren may next have to rule that the liquidation of a plant is not effective until the workmen “accept” the closing in some way, possibly by seeking work elsewhere, or taking some other action, thus converting the closing of a plant to a bilateral act. If, moreover, acceptance be thought material to the issue we note that, in the company’s words, the plaintiff claimants applied for unemployment benefits “in most cases between August 12th and August 21st,” some before and some after. In most cases, also, they listed “labor dispute” as the reason for the application. Had these miners composed these applications with the learning and skill of a Tschaikovsky composing a concerto, or astute counsel a contract, more precise legal terminology might well have been employed. But a liquidation due to a labor dispute is nonetheless a liquidation, unless, of course, we must now sift and weigh the directors’ decision to liquidate. Are we to deny unemployment compensation if unhappy labor relations (i.e., a “labor dispute”) principally controlled their decision, but grant it if other economic stress were responsible? Once more we search the act for authority and the common law for precedent, but none we find, except, possibly, the lonely and anachronistic Cassar decision, supra, in which unemployment compensation was denied as a punishment for alleged breach of contract.
It is our opinion that the intendments of the act require that from the moment the liquidation order became effective as to one employee the relationship of employer-employee was terminated as to all employees, and all, the allegedly bad as well as the presumptively good, became entitled to unemployment *647compensation if, as, and when compliance was had with the remaining requirements of the act. Great A. & P. Tea Co. v. New Jersey Department of Labor & Industry, 29 NJ Super 26, 30, 31 (101 A2d 573).* There is nothing in our State law preventing a corporation from liquidating its plants when it so desires.
That right the defendant company exercised. But it cannot have it both ways: it cannot have a liquidated plant for the purpose of labor negotiations ■undertaken, in appellees’ well-chosen words, “to ■avoid disaster to the community,” but a nonliquidated plant for the purposes of unemployment compensation. Nor, with respect to such compensation, may it be liquidated as to one group of employees and nonliquidated as to the rest.
The judgment of the circuit court should be reversed and the cause remanded to the circuit court with instruction to remand the matter to the Michigan employment security commission for further *648proceedings not inconsistent herewith. No costs, a public question.
Voelker and Kavanagh, JJ., concurred with Smith, J.

 “Q. Now, exhibit P you reeollect what it is, Mr. Sincock?
“A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Those who are employees who the company felt that, because they were working during the period of the strike so to speak, they were entitled to benefits at the time the liquidation notice went into effect, is that right?
“A. They were entitled to benefits at the time.
“Q. And the company also took the position that supervisory personnel in addition to maintenance personnel were entitled to unemployment benefits when the liquidation notice went into- effeet, is .that right?
“A. To the best of my knowledge.”

 The manager of the Calumet hraneh offiee of the Michigan employment security commission made affidavit as follows: “I further certify that the action taken by the Michigan employment security commission shows whether the claims were approved for payment, subject to a waiting week, or whether payments were effected or denied.” Here follow 51 names in the column headed “Approved .(ww or pd).” The meaning of “ww” is waiting week and “pd” is paid. ...

 Section 8(d) (3), labor management relations act, 29 TJSCA, § 158 (d)(3).

 “Any employee who engages in a strike within the 60-day period specified in this subsection shall lose his status as an employee of the employer engaged in the particular labor dispute, for the purpose-of sections 158-160 of this title [sections 8-10 of the act], but such loss of status for such employee shall terminate if and when he is re-employed by such employer.” 29 TJSCA, § 158(d) (4).

 St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 US 38, 84 (56 S Ct 720, 80 Led 1033).

 Knight-Morley Corp. v. Employment Security Commission, 350 Mich 397.

 “We agree with the board of review’s findings that there was a work stoppage on March 4th because of a labor dispute, and therefore the provisions of NJSA 43:21-5(d) come into play. Al■though 'labor dispute’ is not defined in the unemployment compensation act, it is in other labor enactments. The term broadly ineludes any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment or arising out of the respective interests of employer and employee. (Citing cases.) The reasonableness or unreasonableness of employee demands, or the merits of the dispute, have no place in determining whether a labor dispute exists. Fash v. Gordon (1947), 398 Ill 210 (75 NE2d 294). Accordingly, claimants are not entitled to unemployment benefits for the week ending March 7, 1953. NJSA 43: 21-5 (d).
“The employer’s decision to abandon the egg-candling operation at its Paterson warehouse after March 6, 1953, brought the work stoppage to an end, for there was no work available from that time on. As ■already stated, it is clear that the workers had not terminated or severed their relationship with the employer; it continued until Friday, March 6th, when they were notified that the egg-candling operation was discontinued. The claimants are therefore entitled to unemployment benefits for all weeks of unemployment established after March 7, 1953, partial or total, in accordance with the un-employment compensation act — legislation whose underlying policy is the protection of employees from involuntary unemployment (citing cases) and which, being remedial in nature, should be liberally construed.”