Court Opinion

ID: 9539396
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:03:41.886284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:47.723492
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
(concurring in the result) — I would affirm the trial court, which refused to restrain the picketing by the Retail Clerks Union. The pickets are not employees; the appellants have no contractual relationship with them, actual or potential. The only controversy between them is whether the pickets can go upon the property of the appellants with their signs, which on one side read:
“Please Do Not Patronize the Non-Union Employees of This Store.
“Help Us to Persuade the Non-Union Employees of This Store to Join the Union and to Better the Wages, Hours and Working Conditions of Employees of All the Stores in King County.
Retail Clerks Union, AFL-CIO.
Locals 1105 and 1207.”
On the other side, the signs read:
“Please Do Not Patronize the Non-Union Employees of This Store.
“The Majority of the Employees of This Store Are Not Members of the
Retail Clerks Union, AFL-CIO.
Locals 1105 and 1207.”
The trial judge, in a comprehensive and painstaking “Memorandum Decision,” discussed the conflict between property rights and freedom of speech and said, inter alia:
“A review of the authorities reveals that there are certain factual situations where virtually every court would say ‘No’ to persons desiring to come upon privately-owned land for the purpose of exercising free speech. There are also situations where virtually every court would require an owner of private property to suffer an infringement of his right to control the property in favor of free speech. Research reveals there to be five factors which, if present, any court would be justified in weighing the equities of the parties and in considering the right of the union to come upon private property to engage in peaceful picketing.
*432“Courts uniformly have considered tolerating what would otherwise be an unlawful trespass when a person or persons come upon private property for the purpose of exercising his of their right of free speech when all or some of the following factors are present:
“1. When the private property owner designs his property for use by the general public in such a manner as to make it difficult to impossible to distinguish its physical characteristics from publicly-owned property similarly so devoted;
“2. The exercise of the right of free speech is for the purpose of making a communication to persons naturally upon the premises as a result of the inherent nature of the primary use to which the property is devoted;
“3. A similar communication clearly would be permitted under identical circumstances had the property been public;
“4. Interference with the owner’s fundamental rights of privacy or personal use and occupancy is not involved as distinguished from control, and no direct pecuniary loss will result to the owner;
“5. The trespasser has no place or means available as an alternate, or the only alternate would be unrealistic or impractical to the point where there exists a serious restriction upon the trespasser’s ability to communicate as effectively as would naturally and normally be expected were the legal title in public ownership.
“Under such circumstances, the courts weigh the magnitude and character of the invasion of the property rights against the seriousness and nature of the restrictions upon the trespasser’s freedom of speech.”
The trial court found the existence of all five qualifying factors and held that the picketing could not be enjoined. I would agree.
The majority holds that this weighing of the rights of the parties was unnecessary; that the trial court had no jurisdiction to consider the matter inasmuch as the United States had pre-empted jurisdiction of all controversies involving the picketing of an industry affecting interstate commerce.
• The end result is the same — the pickets may continue whether we affirm the trial court or hold that it had no jurisdiction. There is, however, a significant distinction in the rationale by which the end result is reached.
There is no labor dispute between the J. C. Penney Com*433pany and its employees. Naively stated, the union thinks the employees should join the union and is merely seeking to advise the public not to patronize the nonunion employees of the store. To carry out this entirely laudable and legal purpose, they are exercising their freedom of communication by carrying signs which contain information the union desires to impart to the customers of the J. C. Penney store. The courts have upheld their right to use the streets for such a purpose, if the picketing is peaceful.
Under ordinary circumstances, the owner of property can control who goes on it and for what purpose; however, a formal dedication to public use is not necessary to greatly limit that control. The legislature has imposed limitations upon the owner’s right to exclude persons from his premises or to refuse service to them on account of race or creed, if the premises are used as a place of public resort. In other instances, entirely apart from the legislative action, the courts have placed a limitation on the control that an owner might exercise over his property, as in company towns.
In this case, it is conceded that legal title to the property, over which the pickets carried their signs, was in the appellants— and not in the public. The issue presented was whether the property owners, despite their precautions and efforts to protect their right to control the use of the property, had lost the right to prevent the pickets from carrying their signs. (I take it that the pickets, sans signs, were just like other members of the public, and entitled to be where they were.)
As I have indicated, I have no quarrel with the determination of the trial court: That, under the circumstances here existing, the owners had lost their right to ban picketing for informational purposes on their premises. The appellants are before the court as property owners who do not want certain people to do certain things on their property. They are not here as employers, or as individuals having any present or foreseeable future relationship with the picketing union. Just how or on what theory the appellants could get a hearing before the National Labor Relations *434Board (to determine whether pickets are justifiably on their property) is not clear to me.
If instead of being a shopping center, the property in question was merely a forty-acre pasture for contented cows, but a desirable place from which pickets could display signs imparting information (relative to the nonunion status of the employees of the J. C. Penney Company) to the customers of that company, there could be no question that the owner would be entitled to an injunction — not to restrain the picketing, but to prevent their trespass on property where they had no right to be.
Yet the logic of the pre-emption of jurisdiction, as applied by the majority, is that trespass means nothing. Given peaceful picketing and a concern engaged in interstate commerce, then the state courts are divested of jurisdiction over any controversy which might arise.
It should be noted that the question with which we are here concerned was expressly reserved in Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butchers Workmen of North America, Local No. 427, AFL v. Fairlawn Meat, Inc. (1957), 353 U. S. 20, 1 L. Ed. (2d) 613, 77 S. Ct. 604. Unless the court there believed it possible to frame an injunction and enforce an injunction aimed narrowly at a trespass, it did a vain and useless thing in making a remand to the state court.
Until the Supreme Court of the United States holds that the law of trespass is no longer applicable to pickets under any circumstances, the state courts not only have the right, but the duty to determine the extent to which pickets may utilize the property of nonparticipants in a labor dispute.
Donworth, Weaver, and Hunter, JJ., concur with Hill, J.