Court Opinion

ID: 9636815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:43:59.34124+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:49.915234
License: Public Domain

SWAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I do not read the Supreme Court cases as requiring us to hold that none of the conduct of the appellants, as found by the special master and the district court, can be deemed a violation of the anti-trust laws. The members of a labor union are privileged to agree among themselves upon a boycott, although the effect of it may be to restrain interstate commerce, when the purpose of their boycott is to make work for themselves, or improve working conditions or strengthen their union as against a competing union; but I do not think it has yet been held that they may agree with their employers to enforce a boycott for the very purpose of restraining commerce and increasing the ' price of articles manufactured or dealt in by their employers within a local market area. As I read the-findings of fact the case at bar falls within the latter classification. Among' the findings supporting this view the following may be quoted:
“353. The combination and conspiracy hereinbefore described was intended to and did give the local union manufacturers power to control the market price of their products as a result of their monopoly and was intended to and did give the union contractors exclusive .purchasing rights to all electrical equipment for installation and contracts involving larger sums of money wherewith to add to their profits.”
“359. The purpose of the defendants and those participating with them, in conducting the boycott is, in so far as is practicable, to exclude from the New York City market all electrical equipment unless it is manufactured or built by members of Local No. 3, employed by either local union manufacturers in the factory or by local union contractors on the job where the equipment is to be installed.”
“366. All the acts of the defendants and those acting in concert with them were calculated and intended to prevent and destroy all interstate commerce in electrical equipment of such kinds as can be and are manufactured by local union manufacturers or built on the job by local union contractors, in order thereby to secure a monopoly for the members of Local No. 3 and for their employers, the union electrical contractors and the union electrical manufacturers, of the work of manufacturing in whole or in part such types of electrical equipment to be used in the City of New York.” .
“368. A desire or intention by the conspirators to bring about any modification of the standards or terms of wages, hours, or working conditions, or employment relations maintained by the plaintiffs, or any of them, in any of their factories outside the Metropolitan Area, did not in any way motivate the conspirators in boycotting the plaintiffs’ products.”
In my opinion the facts found by the trial court make applicable the principle of United States v. Brims, 272 U.S. 549, 47 S.Ct. 169, 71 L.Ed. 403, involving a conspiracy of mill work manufacturers, building contractors and a carpenters’ union. Neither the Clayton Act nor the NorrisLaGuardia Act has rendered that case obsolete, as recent opinions of the Supreme Court plainly show. See Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U.S. 469, 501, 60 S.Ct. 982, 84 L.Ed. 1311, 128 A.L.R. 1044; United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U.S. 219, 232, 61 S.Ct. 463, 85 L.Ed. 788. The ninth circuit has just applied the rule of United States v. Brims, supra, to facts very similar to those of the case at bar. Lumber Products Ass’n v. United States, 9 Cir., 144 F.2d 546. I think that we should likewise apply it. Until the contrary shall be authoritatively determined, I am unwilling to believe that the congressional legislation exempting labor unions from injunctions was intended to go so far as to permit employers and employees to combine to do what neither the City of New York by municipal ordinance nor the State of New York by legislative fiat could lawfully do, namely, exclude manufactured articles from the local market merely because they were manufactured outside the state. I agree with my colleagues that the injunction was granted in term too broad, but I cannot agree that no injunction whatever is permissible or that the prayer for a declaratory judgment should be denied. I therefore dissent from dismissal of the complaint.