Court Opinion

ID: 9749168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:26:02.543779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:44.585214
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Cohen:
In the first case of Shaw Electric Company, Inc. v. International Brotherhood Electrical Workers Local Union No. 98, 418 Pa. 1, 208 A. 2d 769 (1965), the majority of our Court supplied the allegations to the complaint so as to defeat the Union’s contention that the action was pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act and held that the conduct complained of was a violation of a collective bargaining agreement and not pre-empted by the NLRA.
The majority now holds that since the Union did not raise the jurisdictional objections to the then nonexistent but later court-supplied allegations at the same time it raised the original jurisdictional objections, the Union is now prohibited from so doing.
Drummond v. Drummond, 414 Pa. 548, 200 A. 2d 887 (1964), is not authority for the majority’s position. In Drummond v. Drummond it was held that since the original jurisdictional objections had been adjudicated that became “the law of the case as to all jurisdictional objections which were actually raised or might have been raised in that appeal.” (Emphasis supplied). Since there were no allegations in the original Shaw complaint that alleged a breach of the collective bargaining agreement, the Union could not have raised in the first appeal the provisions of the contract requiring arbitration. It was only after the majority in the original Shaw action supplied the allega*215tions that constituted a breach of the collective bargaining agreement that the arbitration provisions of the collective bargaining agreement became an issue. Hence, in effect, the majority now says that since the Union raised jurisdictional problems in the original complaint, it may not now raise additional jurisdictional questions which were created by the court-amended complaint. Accordingly, I would not quash the appeal. On the merits I would hold that the contract obligation to arbitrate is clear and broad enough to include the dispute in question and enter judgment in favor of the appellant as we did in United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 413 Pa. 358, 196 A. 2d 857 (1964), and as the Supreme Court of the United States did in the following : United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574 (1960) ; United Steelworkers v. American Manufacturing Company, 363 U.S. 564 (1960); United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel and Car Corporation, 363 U.S. 593 (1960).
I dissent.