Court Opinion

ID: 9460976
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:03:35.850994+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:50.784140
License: Public Domain

ADAMS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
Judge Hunter’s thoughtful and comprehensive opinion reflects to a large extent my own views with respect to the issues presented by this appeal. However, although Judge Hunter, in discussing Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks Local 770,1 does advert to the fundamental jurisprudential principle that courts are to interpret laws and to permit policy considerations to infect their decisions only within statutory interstices, he does not appear to accord that principle the same weight I would in reaching the conclusion that a Boys Markets injunction is not appropriate in the circumstances here.
Analysis of the scope of the Boys Markets decision must encompass an appreciation of the widespread abhorrence of the labor injunction that existed at the time of the enactment of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.2 Many viewed the injunction as the principle weapon of those antagonistic to the emerging labor *334movement. Some courts, it was felt, employed the injunction to effectuate their own policy predilections, predilections that did not attach substantial significance to the interests of the working man. In response to these sentiments, Congress enacted the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The Act expressly deprived the federal courts of jurisdiction to issue labor injunctions in almost all circumstances.3
Subsequent developments, however, seemed to temper somewhat the posture of judicial abstention imposed by the Norris-LaGuardia Act. In 1947, Congress enacted Section 301(a) of the Labor-Management Relations Act which, by its terms, permits suits for violations of collective bargaining agreements to be brought in federal courts. In Textile Workers Union v. Lincoln Mills,4 the Supreme Court, in reversing the district court’s refusal to compel the employer to arbitrate pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement, held that Section 301(a) calls upon the federal courts to fashion a federal substantive labor law.
Lincoln Mills and the Steelworkers Trilogy,5 *which followed three years later, made it apparent that the cornerstone of this judge-made labor law was to be a policy favoring the operation of the arbitral process in resolving labor-management disputes. Inevitably the Supreme Court was faced with the request of an employer, relying on this federal policy favoring arbitration, to enjoin a strike over an arbitrable grievance. The union, of course, interposed the express prohibition against such an injunction contained in the Norris-LaGuardia Act. In 1962, the Court, in Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson,6 held that the Act precluded the issuance of the injunction.
But eight years later, in Boys Markets, the Supreme Court reconsidered Sinclair. This reconsideration was prompted in part by the “anomalous” situation created when some employers seeking injunctive relief in state courts, which were not subject to limitations like those of the Norris-LaGuardia Act,7 were frustrated in their attempts by the unions’ removal of the cases to federal courts. Such federal courts proceeded to vacate the state court injunctions on the basis of the Act. The Court overruled Sinclair and, as Judge Hunter notes, made a “narrow” exception to the Norris-LaGuardia Act. In so doing, the Court “accommodated” the Act to the federal policy favoring arbitration by permitting an injunction in the carefully circumscribed situation that exists when a work stoppage is over an arbitrable grievance. The Court, nevertheless, emphasized that with its opinion in Boys Markets it did “not undermine the vitality of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.” 8
In light of this historical backdrop, it is necessary to approach cases appearing to hover near the parameters of the Boys Markets exception to the Norris-LaGuardia Act with an understanding that Boys Markets itself may represent the judiciary’s most ambitious foray into an area seemingly pre-empted by statute. Absent a clear signal from the Supreme Court, doubts should be resolved in favor of the applicability of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. When viewed from this perspective, Judge *335Hunter’s analysis is, in my judgment, particularly persuasive.
It may be suggested that Gateway Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers 9 constitutes a direction by the Supreme Court for federal courts to exercise less circumspection than the language of Boys Markets would seem to indicate in issuing injunctions in circumstances such as those here. The basis of such a suggestion, so the argument seems to go, is the Court’s willingness to imply a no-strike obligation when the collective bargaining agreement did not contain an express no-strike provision. However, in Teamsters Local 174 v. Lucas Flour Company,10 a damage action, the Supreme Court, eight years prior to Boys Markets, implied a no-strike clause coextensive with the arbitration provision. Therefore, in light of the well-established Lucas Flour precedent, the implication of a no-strike clause in the context of a suit to secure a Boys Markets injunction was not particularly surprising, and, therefore, cannot be said to amount to a signal to relax the rather strict preconditions placed on the issuance of a labor injunction by the Boys Markets decision and set out with specificity by Justice Brennan.11
Accordingly, for the reasons so well expressed by Judge Hunter plus those set forth above, I respectfully dissent.

. 398 U.S. 235, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970).

. See generally Frankfurter & Green, The Labor Injunction (1930).

. Cf. United States v. UMW, 330 U.S. 258, 67 S.Ct. 677, 91 L.Ed. 884 (1947).

. 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957).

. United Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U.S. 564, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403 (1960); United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U.S. 574, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960); United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960).

. 370 U.S. 195, 82 S.Ct. 1328, 8 L.Ed.2d 440 (1962).

. At the time of Boys Markets, “about one-half of the States [had] enacted so-called ‘little Norris-LaGuardia Acts’ . . . .” However, “in only about 14 jurisdictions [was] there a significant Norris-LaGuardia-type prohibition against equitable remedies for breach of no-strike obligations.” 398 U.S. at 247-248 n. 15, 90 S.Ct. at ^1591.

. 398 U.S. at 253, 90 S.Ct. at 1594.

. 414 U.S. 368, 94 S.Ct. 629, 38 L.Ed.2d 583 (1974).

. 369 U.S. 95, 82 S.Ct. 571, 7 L.Ed.2d 593 (1962).

. 398 U.S. 253-255, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed. 2d 199.