Court Opinion

ID: 9865280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:30:05.278966+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:16.903122
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stone
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Temporary injunction in this case was issued on the basis of the allegations of the complaint. Permanent injunction must be justified by the evidence.
Counsel for plaintiffs in their brief urge reversal on the ground of assertedly tortious acts concerning which evidence was adduced at the trial. The acts upon which plaintiffs rely are set out in their brief and may be summarized as follows:
First. Threats to injure and destroy the business of plaintiffs unless they should sign union contracts. The only threats testified to were vague and general, such as the alleged statement to the owner of a truck line that “we will get you by hook or crook,” and to Beach, that if he would not join the union, “the union will put forth every effort to destroy the Beach Milk Company as a business.” Such vague and indefinite threats, even in the absence of denial, were not sufficiently specific and definite to constitute a background of violence in con*426nection with other acts or to serve as basis of claim for damages or injunction.
Second. Display of force against the truck drivers of nonunion carriers and dogging them on their routes. The only evidence in the record as to this charge is that on one occasion, some twelve days before this action was begun, several union representatives congregated in cars across from the headquarters of a trucking concern and that one or more of them in a car followed each of the truckers as he went over his route picking up cream and carrying it to its destination in the city of Denver. As the trial court found, this “instilled fear into the heart of the driver.” Defendants say this action was taken for the purpose of investigating the sources from which the nonunion truckers obtained their milk and the destination to which it was delivered. There was no actual interference, no word of threat, no prevention of any trucker from carrying out his duties, and no attempt or threat of repetition of the act. No ground for damages or injunction can be based thereon.
Third. Prevention of non-union carriers from delivering milk to union dairies by means of directions given employees, by picketing union dairies and by threatening strike. The evidence as to this charge discloses that for the purpose of accomplishing the objective of the union to organize the entire milk trucking industry in Denver, representatives of the union were stationed about certain union milk processing plants and that when a driver approached such plant he was asked if he had a union card; if not, he was quietly asked to join the union. Upon his refusal he was told he could not unload at that plant and, when he approached the dock, the union employees there refused to handle the milk. On one occasion a picket was posted at a union plant, but upon protest by the manager, he was told it was a mistake and the picket was withdrawn. This act may be considered together with a fourth act charged by plaintiffs: that the defendants threw a picket line around the *427plant of the Beach Milk Company with the customary “unfair” legend and with the usual result of preventing delivery of milk by union drivers and interfering with the delivery of supplies and materials and helping induce union bricklayers engaged in urgent construction work at the plant to cease work. The evidence discloses that after soliciting Beach to sign an all-union contract without success, the defendants threw a picket line about the Beach plant consisting of one picket carrying an “unfair” sign. The first day there were four or five other union members standing across the street. Thereafter there was seldom any union member present except the picket. There was no violence, nor threat of violence. There was occasional soliciting of an employee to join the union, but no interference or persistence in so doing. Did such acts, third and fourth, constitute unfair labor practice under the terms of the Colorado Labor Peace Act, and if so, were they sufficient basis for damages and injunction?
In answering this question we are not dealing with novel translation of economic theory, but with rules of constitutional right which, even if apparently not following earlier trends of interpretation, have been repeatedly declared by this court and the Supreme Court of the United States. At the time of the passage of the Labor Peace Act this court in People v. Harris, 104 Colo. 386, 91 P. (2d) 989, Denver Union v. Truck Lines, 106 Colo. 25, 101 P. (2d) 486, and Denver Union v. Buckingham Co., 108 Colo. 419, 118 P. (2d) 1088, and the United States Supreme Court in Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 60 Sup. Ct. 736, 84 L. Ed. 1093, and American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U. S. 321, 61 Sup. Ct. 568, 85 L. Ed. 855, had declared that peaceful picketing is a form of free speech, and, as such, protected by constitutional guaranty.
Perhaps because of actual familiarity with those decisions, the legislature specifically declared in the Labor Peace Act (S.L. ’43, c. 131), that, “The right of both *428employer and employee ¿reely to express, declare and publish their respective v.ws and proposals concerning any labor relationship shall not be abrogated or limited by this act, nor shall the exercise of such right constitute an unfair labor practice,” section 7 (2), and further declared in section 24, “nor shall anything in this act be so construed as unlawfully to invade the right to freedom dom of speech.” The provision in section 6 (e) declaring that to cooperate in engaging in or inducing picketing is an unfair labor practice must, then, be construed in harmony with sections 7 (2) and 24 as to the right of free speech, if possible, and so construed, the word “picketing” as employed in the act must be held as intended in its coercive, and not in its persuasive, sense. Otherwise the limitation on picketing constitutes a limitation on the right to express views concerning labor relationships and invades the right to freedom of speech, contrary to the explicit provisions of the statute.
That such is the proper interpretation is borne out by the fact that our Labor Peace Act was patterned on, and followed closely, the Wisconsin Labor Peace Act. Our provision as to picketing is copied verbatim from the Wisconsin act. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin in Hotel Employees Local v. Board, 236 Wis. 329, 294 N.W. 632, affirmed a judgment restraining picketing as an unfair labor practice. The case was taken to the United States Supreme Court on the ground that it enjoined peaceful picketing and consequently freedom of speech. That court, speaking through Frankfurter, J., said: “Precisely what restraints Wisconsin has imposed upon the petitioners is for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to determine. * * * And that court has unambiguously rejected the construction upon which the claim of the petitioners rests.
“That the order forbids only violence, and that it permits peaceful picketing by these petitioners, is made abundantly clear by the expressions of the court: ‘The act does not limit the right of an employee to speak *429freely. * * * The term “picketing” as used in (the act), does not include acts held in the Thornhill case, supra, to be within the protection of the constitutional guaranty of the right of free speech. The express language of the act forbids such a construction. It clearly refers to that kind of picketing which the Thornhill Case says the state has the power to deal with “as a part of its power to preserve the peace, and protect the privacy, the lives and the property of its residents.” ’ * * * In this case it is undisputed that numerous assaults were committed by the pickets, that the pickets acted in concert; that the fines of these pickets were paid by the union; that ingress and egress to and from the premises of the employer were prevented by force and arms. It was at conduct of that kind that the statute was aimed. It is conduct of that kind that is dealt with in this case. It is conduct of that kind that it declared to be an unfair labor practice by the statute and from which the defendants are ordered to cease and desist.” Hotel & Restaurant Employee’s Local v. Board, 315 U.S. 437, 62 Sup. Ct. 706, 86 L. Ed. 946. See, annotation, 149 A. L. R., at page 469.
So construing our Labor Peace Act, there is no actional claim, nor ground for injunction resulting either from the so-called picketing at the union creameries or from the picketing at the Beach plant. Neither was a violation of the Act.
Whether injunction would lie if peaceful picketing were specifically forbidden by the act we are not now called upon to determine, but, note the statement of Jackson, J., in the opinion of the court in Bakery, etc., Drivers Local v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769 (62 Sup. Ct. 816, 86 L. Ed. 1178) at page 774: “So far as we can ascertain from the opinions delivered by the state courts in this case, those courts were concerned only with the question whether there was involved a labor dispute within the meaning of the New York statutes, and assumed that the legality of the injunction followed from a determina*430tion that such a dispute was not involved. Of course that does not follow: one need not be in a ‘labor dispute’ as defined by state law to have a right under the Fourteenth Amendment to express a grievance in a labor matter by publication unattended by violence, coercion, or conduct otherwise unlawful or oppressive.” As to the peaceful picketing there considered, the court said: “We ourselves can perceive no substantive evil of such magnitude as to mark a limit to the right of free speech which the petitioners sought to exercise. The record in this case does not contain the slightest suggestion of embarrassment in the task of governance; there are no findings and no circumstances from which we can draw the inference that the publication was attended or likely to be attended by violence, force or coercion, or conduct otherwise unlawful or oppressive; and it is not indicated that there was an actual or threatened abuse of the right to free speech through the use of excessive picketing. A state is not required to tolerate in all places and all circumstances even peaceful picketing by an individual. But so far as we can tell, respondents’ mobility and their insulation from the public as middlemen made it practically impossible for petitioners to make known their legitimate grievances to the public whose patronage was sustaining the peddler system except by the means here employed and contemplated; and those means are such as to have slight, if any, repercussions upon the interests of strangers to the issue.”
As a fifth act, plaintiffs charge that the defendant caused union bricklayers who were engaged in necessary construction work at the Beach Dairy to cease work to the damage of plaintiff Beach. There is no suggestion, either in the brief or the evidence, that the work stoppage was caused by any act other than the picketing of the Beach plant hereinabove discussed, and the consequent refusal of the union bricklayers to cross the picket line. Such charge is not a separate act, but only one of the results of the act of picketing hereinabove discussed.
*431As a sixth and last tortious act plaintiff charges that the defendants called upon the managers of the PigglyWiggly stores, some twenty-five in number, in and near the city of Denver and threatened to picket those stores unless they immediately ceased to sell milk of the Beach dairy. This charge is sustained by the evidence. As said by the trial court in its findings: “In carrying out the threat of a secondary boycott made by the union representatives to the Beach Milk Company, various union officials * * * contacted Mr. E. H. Lambotte, President of the Piggly-Wiggly Stores Company * * *. Some nine owners or managers of Piggly-Wiggly stores were also contacted. * * * Mr. Lambotte was advised * * * that if Beach refused it. might be necessary to establish a secondary boycott of the Piggly-Wiggly stores. * * * Coffey advised Lambotte that the union was going to picket the Piggly-Wiggly stores.” Thus the trial court found that a secondary boycott was threatened. The purpose of the union in its dispute with Beach was to organize the milk processing industry of Denver. The Piggly-Wiggly stores, while together constituting one of Beach’s best customers, were not in any way engaged in the business of processing milk. They were engaged in the retail grocery business. Their sale of milk was a very minor part of such business. Picketing these grocery stores, as an indirect means of exerting economic pressure in a dispute involving only the milk processing industry, was a plain violation of the Labor Peace Act; it would have caused violent “repercussions upon' the interests of strangers to the issue,” and it so far extends the orbit of industrial dispute and so “conscripts neutrals” as to be, I believe, within the authority of regulation by the state legislature as indicated by the decisions of the federal courts. As said in Carpenters & Joiners Union v. Ritter’s Cafe, 315 U.S. 722 (62 Sup. Ct. 807, 86 L. Ed. 1143), “Recognition of peaceful picketing as an exercise of free speech does not imply that the states must be without power to confine the sphere of communication to that *432directly related to the dispute. Restriction of picketing to the area of the industry within which a labor dispute arises leaves open to the disputants other traditional modes of communication. To deny to the states the power to draw this line is to write into the Constitution the notion that every instance of peaceful picketing— anywhere and under any circumstances — is necessarily a phase of the controversy which provoked the picketing. Such a view of the Due Process Clause (in the Fourteenth Amendment) would compel the states to allow the disputants in a particular industrial episode to conscript neutrals having no relation to either the dispute or the industry in which it arose.”
Accordingly, in my opinion the injunction against threatened boycott by picketing the Piggly-Wiggly stores as unfair should be made permanent, and the cases should be remanded for the determination of the question of damages, if any, suffered as a result of threat of such picketing, and that as to the other issues the action should be dismissed.
Mr. Justice Hilliard concurs in this opinion.