Court Opinion

ID: 9449124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:57:44.305968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:42.840116
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I approve of and concur in Judge SWYGERT’S opinion.
The dissent sees an implication, in the majority opinion, of a dilution of truth. Here are Judge SWYGERT’S words: “We do this without intending to sanction material departures from minimal standards of truthfulness to which even participants in heated labor controversies must adhere.”
I respectfully state that these words speak differently to me than they do to Judge SCHNACKENBERG. Put another way, the words say that the authors of the majority do not approve “material departures from minimal standards of truthfulness * * In the context of Judge SWYGERT’S statement, it is clear that he is speaking about a fundamental legal rule governing fraud and deceit. He said it in agreeing with the trial examiner that the omission did not amount to a “misrepresentation of a material fact.” There is no basis for a fear that the case at bar is being subjected to a different test of truth than any other case in this court.
The dissent presumably accepts Judge SWYGERT’S cogent reasoning that there is no secondary boycott involved here. But it says that the six men were rightly discharged because they violated the right of National to the loyalty of the men, citing National Labor Relations Board v. Electrical Workers, 346 U.S. 464, 74 S.Ct. 172, 98 L.Ed. 195 (1953). The majority opinion sufficiently distinguishes that case. There had been no hearing and no Board order against the company in that case; the employees picketed the company’s station for ten days on off-hours, though drawing full pay; and the handbills “launched a vitriolic attack on the quality of the company’s television broadcasts.” (Emphasis added.)
The Supreme Court agreed that there was cause for discharge and stated what Judge SCHNACKENBERG says about employee disloyalty. The extreme conduct of the employees there was the basis for the language he quoted.
The conduct of the employees in the case at bar does not deserve the dissent’s statement that “No practical person at the scene would have considered it other than a brutal effort to destroy National’s business.” It could be that reasonable and practical persons would view the conduct as an exercise of the right of free speech in criticizing National’s labor policies; and would think that employee loyalty, on which the dissent places much weight, could hardly be expected of the six men, not rehired by National after the 1959 strike until the examiner’s order was issued nearly a year later. As Justice Frankfurter said, dissenting in National Labor Relations Board v. Electrical Workers, 346 U.S. 464, 479-480, 74 S.Ct. 172, 180-181, 98 L.Ed. 195 (1953), “Many of the legally recognized tactics and weapons of labor would readily be condemned for ‘disloyalty’ were they employed between man and man in friendly personal relations.”
For further support of the loyalty point, the dissent rests on Hoover Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 191 F.2d 380 (6th Cir., 1951). There, there was mass picketing, violence and a national boycott by men against their employer while drawing wages. Those facts distinguish that case.