Court Opinion

ID: 9636737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:41:21.932195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:48.745333
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice Bell:
Because of threats and violence, appellant admits, as it must, that the Local Joint Executive Board of Philadelphia and its affiliated unions were properly enjoined from picketing plaintiffs’ places of business and from threatening plaintiffs’ employees: Allen-Bradley Local v. Wisconsin E. R. Board, 315 U.S. 740; Milk Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor, 312 U. S. 287; Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. United Electrical Union, 353 Pa. 446, 46 A. 2d 16; Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. v. U.S.W. of A., 353 Pa. 420, 45 A. 2d 857; Wortex Mills v. Textile Workers Union, 369 Pa. 359, 85 A. 2d 851; see also N.L.R.B. v. Fansteel Corp., 306 U.S. 240; Auto Workers v. Wisconsin Board, 336 U.S. 245, 265; Hughes v. Superior Court of California, 339 U.S. 460, 464-466; Bakery & Pastry Local v. Wohl, 315 U.S. 769, 775-776.
“The power and the duty of the Stale to take adequate steps to preserve the peace and to protect the privacy, the lives and the property of its residents cannot be doubted”: Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 105; Carlson v. California, 310 U.S. 106, 113.
Defendants sought in the present proceedings a vacation of the decree of the Court of Common Pleas which was entered in 1944. Instead of vacating, the lower Court amended its original decree. What are the respective rights of the union and of those persons whom it threatened and unlawfully injured?
The field of industrial relationships and rights is so new and fluctuating that its boundaries are not yet clearly denned and its guideposts are few. While picket*40ing is in some respects a form of speech, free speech and peaceful picketing are not synonymous, nor is picketing the actual or legal equivalent of free speech: Hughes v. Superior Court of Cal., 339 U.S. 460; Bakery & Pastry Drivers v. Wohl, 315 U.S. 769, 775, 776; Wilbank v. Bartenders Union, 360 Pa. 48, 60 A. 2d 21; Wortex Mills v. Textile Workers Union, 360 Pa. 359, 85 A. 2d 851. It is hornbook law that even “freedom of speech” can be abused or limited or restrained or punished: Wortex Mills v. Textile Workers Union, 369 Pa., supra; Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77; Commonwealth v. Geuss, 168 Pa. Superior Ct. 22, affirmed in 368 Pa. 290. The question (here involved) of termination or modification of a restraining order is not a one-way street. For example, 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 (1) lapse of time; (2) a compliance with and good behavior since the entry of the order or decree; and (3) a change of union — 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. 261; N.L.R.B. v. Mexia Textile Mills, 339 U.S. 563; N.L.R.B. v. Pool Mfg. Co., 339 U.S. 577.
A Court of Equity has the right and the discretionary power to vacate or modify an injunctive decree where the facts and circumstances have so changed as to make it just and equitable to do so and there is no longer any reasonable likelihood of a recurrence of the violence which induced the injunction: Ladner v. Siegel, 298 Pa. 487, 148 A. 699; Milk Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Dairies, 312 U.S. 287; 43 C.J.S., Injunctions, §218, p. 956.
In the Milk Drivers Union case Mr. Justice Frankfurter, speaking for the Court, said (pages 294, 295, 298) : “No one will doubt that Illinois can protect its storekeepers from being coerced by fear of window-*41smashing,s or burnings or bombings. And acts which in isolation are peaceful may be part of a coercive thrust when entangled with acts of violence. The picketing in this case was set in a background of violence. In such a setting it could justifiably be concluded that the momentum of fear generated, by past violence would survive even though future picketing might be wholly peaceful.* So the supreme court of Illinois found. We cannot say that such a finding so contradicted experience as to warrant our rejection. Nor can we say that it was written into the Fourteenth Amendment that a state through its courts cannot base protection against future coercion on an inference of the continuing threat of past misconduct. Cf. Ethyl Gasoline Corp. v. United States, 309 U.S. 436.
. . The Fourteenth Amendment still leaves the state ample discretion in dealing with manifestations of force in the settlement of industrial conflicts. ... To deny a state the right to a judgment which the National Labor Relations Board has been allowed to make in cognate situations, would indeed be distorting the Fourteenth Amendment with restrictions upon state power which it is not our business to impose. A state may withdraw the injunction from labor controversies but no less certainly the Fourteenth Amendment does not make unconstitutional the use of the injunction as a means of restricting violence. We find nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment that prevents a state if it so chooses from placing confidence in a chancellor’s decree and compels it to rely exclusively on a policeman’s club.
“ (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 *42only so long as it counteracts a continuing intimidation. Familiar equity procedure assures opportunity for modifying or vacating an injunction when its continuance is no longer warranted.”
The majority rely upon Tamagno v. Waiters Union, 373 Pa. 457, 96 A. 2d 145. That case, decided by a divided Court, was expressly based upon and justified by the very unusual facts there present; it lends neither support nor precedent for the establishment of a rule that mere passage of time plus compliance with a Court’s valid and just decree are sufficient to enable a union to obtain the vacation of such decree, and certainly not in the teeth of a chancellor’s finding that the facts and circumstances do not justify a vacation.
The amended decree entered by the lower court permits defendants to solicit membership in and peacefully persuade the employees to join their unions; it is not clear whether defendant and its affiliated unions are hereafter restrained from peacefully picketing plaintiffs’ premises for organizational purposes; if it so provides, it should be modified; if not, it should be clarified so as to clearly permit peaceful picketing solely for organizational purposes. The amended decree as thus modified or clarified would give the union exactly what it asked in its oral argument, viz., an opportunity and a right to peacefully picket for the purpose of peacefully persuading the men and women employees to join their union. The amended decree continues to enjoin threats, molestation and violence — a protection which the employees feel is still necessary and to which the lower court feels they are entitled.
The action of the lower court in vacating or modifying, or refusing to vacate or modify, its decree should be reversed by an appellate Court only for an abuse of discretion, oi* where there is no adequate evidence to support the chancellor’s findings; and with the amendment or clarification hereinabove set forth no' abuse of *43discretion or reversible error was proved by these appellants. Kress Box Co. v. Pittsburgh, 333 Pa. 121, 4 A. 2d 528; Roberts v. Lower Merion Township, 333 Pa. 333, 5 A. 2d 106; Cf. Deviney v. Lynch, 372 Pa. 570, 94 A. 2d 578; Dearnley v. Survetnick, 360 Pa. 572, 63 A. 2d 66; Berkowitz v. Kass, 351 Pa. 263, 40 A. 2d 691.
Since the union alleges it has no desire or intention to employ threats or violence, it seems to me that the amended decree with the above modification or clarification deprives no party of any rights and gives to each party the rights and protection to which it or they are entitled. Conld anything be fairer?
For these reasons I would affirm the amended decree of the lower court as hereinabove modified or clarified.

Italics throughout, ours.