TRUCK DRIVERS'LOCAL NO. 421, ETC. v. United States
| Decision Date | 22 May 1942 |
| Docket Number | No. 12022-12024.,12022-12024. |
| Citation | 128 F.2d 227 |
| Parties | TRUCK DRIVERS' LOCAL NO. 421, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, CHAUFFEURS, WAREHOUSEMEN AND HELPERS OF AMERICA v. UNITED STATES. BLANKENSHIP v. SAME. PFOHL v. SAME. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED
C. I. McNutt, of Des Moines, Iowa (Joseph A. Padway, of Washington, D.C., and John Connolly, Jr., George E. O'Malley, and Irvin Schlesinger, all of Des Moines, Iowa, on the brief), for appellants.
Hugh B. Cox, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen. (Daniel B. Britt, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., Thomas H. Daly and Robert Diller, Sp. Attys., both of Washington, D. C., Thurman Arnold, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Tobias E. Diamond, U. S. Atty., of Sheldon, Iowa, on the brief), for appellee.
Before THOMAS and JOHNSEN, Circuit Judges, and REEVES, District Judge.
A local labor union, its president, its financial secretary, and its business agent were indicted jointly with the operators of six dairy companies, for violating the Sherman Act as amended, 26 Stat. 209, 50 Stat. 693, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1, in conspiring to fix and maintain the retail selling price of milk, produced in the States of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, and distributed, after being standardized, pasteurized and bottled by the dairy companies, in the "Dubuque area", consisting of the city of Dubuque, Iowa, its suburban territory, and the city of East Dubuque, Illinois. The president of the union died while the indictment was pending. All of the other defendants were tried jointly to a jury and were convicted. The conviction and sentence have become final as to the dairy operators. The union, its financial secretary, and its business agent have appealed.
The union had a membership of approximately 350 persons, consisting of milk drivers, inside dairy workers, "over-the-road" truck drivers, taxicab drivers, drivers of local coal, ice, laundry and bread trucks, warehousemen and others. It was an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor and had made union contracts with all of the dairy companies involved. It had a special "milkmen's division" of about 100 members, consisting of the milk drivers and other dairy workers, which held separate meetings from the general union, and whose actions and minutes were required to be approved by the union as a whole. The milk drivers were of two classes, though the distinction is not important here — those who made deliveries in dairy company trucks, on a regular salary basis, and those who paid the dairy companies for the bottled milk and made deliveries in their own trucks, on a fixed differential.
There was evidence that the dairy companies in 1939 had held meetings among themselves and fixed the price at which the bottled milk would be sold at retail throughout the Dubuque area. The plants of five of the dairy companies involved were located in Dubuque, Iowa, and the plant of the sixth was located in Wisconsin. The minimum prices which the dairy companies as "handlers" were required to pay the farmers or producers of milk had been established for the Dubuque area by the Secretary of Agriculture, under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, 50 Stat. 246, 247, 7 U.S.C.A. § 608c, but these orders did not control the retail selling prices of the handlers. At a meeting of the dairy companies held on September 15, 1939, it had been agreed to fix the retail selling price at 11 cents a quart, and this price was continued in effect by all of them until the latter part of July, 1940. On July 28, 1940, Sanitary Milk Company, which had joined with the six defendant dairy companies in the price-fixing meeting of September 15, 1939, broke away from the combination and announced, by newspaper advertisements and other public notices, that on the following day it would inaugurate a new "thrift plan" of selling, under which the consumer would pay 11 cents for the first quart of milk and 8 cents for each additional quart purchased on the same delivery. The efforts made to combat the placing and keeping of this thrift plan in operation prompted this indictment.
On the evening of the day that Sanitary announced its thrift plan to the public, the milkmen's division of the union held a special meeting at its headquarters and defendant dairy operators held a meeting at a local hotel. Both meetings were purportedly called "to discuss the thrift plan". The president of the union, who also apparently served as chairman of the milkmen's division, appointed a committee to attend the meeting of the dairy operators, for the purpose of ascertaining what they intended to do about the situation. There was evidence that the dairy operators told the milk drivers' committee that they "would go along 100% with any plan the union adopted to try and stop the thrift plan". The committee reported back to the milkmen's division that the dairy operators had agreed not to change the price of their milk and "had said that they would cooperate with the union if the union could try and stop the thrift plan".
The meeting then discussed various proposals for dealing with the thrift plan, including a general strike and a strike confined to the Sanitary Milk Company. In connection with the last proposal, the minutes show the adoption of a motion that any member taking a customer from the Sanitary drivers "until the trouble is brought to a satisfactory conclusion" and "for two weeks after a settlement is made" should be fined $100 and should not be allowed to return to work until the fine was paid. It was suggested that the Sanitary drivers should go to the plant and advise the president of the company that they would not work unless the manager, who was responsible for the inauguration of the thrift plan, was fired and the plan was discontinued. Some of the drivers accordingly went to the Sanitary plant that same evening and declared that they had voted to strike, or would be obliged to do so, unless the thrift plan was abandoned and the previous price of milk was restored. The president and the manager of the plant protested against any attempt of the union to interfere with prices and assured the drivers that there would be no lay-offs or changes in the condition of their employment by reason of the adoption of the thrift plan. The thrift plan was placed in operation the following morning, and the drivers made no attempt to strike. As a matter of fact, no strike could properly have been called without the approval of the union as a whole.
The second evening following, the milkmen's division held another meeting, as did also the dairy operators. The milkmen's division adopted a resolution, which was regularly entered in its minutes, providing that any driver "taking a customer from the driver of another company" or taking "customers who have been buying from stores" should be fined $100. A committee was selected to handle any disputes that might arise in connection with the resolution. The chairman, who was the union president, again appointed a committee to attend the meeting of the dairy operators, for the purpose of advising them of the action which had been taken. The committee did so and reported back that "the handlers would cooperate 100 per cent". The following morning, when one of the drivers or distributors, who owned his own truck, inquired of one of the dairy operators "whether any permanent price policy had been determined", he was told:
The president of the union, who, as has been indicated, also acted as chairman of the milkmen's division, undertook to police the situation in order to prevent any of the Sanitary drivers from accepting customers of the other dairies. On August 7, 1940, he accused a driver named Rittenhouse of having violated the $100-fine resolution and instructed him to appear before the disputes committee which had been selected at the July 30th meeting. Rittenhouse appeared before the committee that same afternoon and explained that the dairy company had informed him at the time that the customer was a newcomer to the city. The disputes committee was advised by the business agent of the union that, in his opinion, it had no authority to impose a fine and that it ought therefore to refer the matter to the executive board of the union.
The president of the union then filed a written charge against Rittenhouse with the executive board of the union, and Rittenhouse was notified to appear for hearing on September 17, 1940. He did so and, after a hearing, the matter was purportedly taken under advisement by the executive board. The executive board never took any further action upon the charges, but Rittenhouse, of course, ceased to take on more new customers. About this time the Department of Justice began to investigate the Dubuque situation, and shortly thereafter the union "took the resolution off their records".
The principal contention of appellants here, as it was in the trial court, by attack upon the indictment and by motion for directed verdict, is in substance that the union, it officers and members could not be prosecuted under the Sherman Act for the activities involved, because of the provisions of sections 6 and 20 of the Clayton Act as amended, 38 Stat. 731 and 738, 15 U.S.C.A. § 17, 29 U.S.C.A. § 52, and the provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70-73, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 101-115. It is unnecessary to set out here these familiar provisions of the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts. The general contention made has only recently been reexamined and again directly answered by the Supreme Court in Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 1939, 310 U.S....
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