INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD, ETC. v. WL Mead, Inc.

Decision Date22 March 1956
Docket NumberNo. 4950,4995.,4950
Citation230 F.2d 576
PartiesINTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, CHAUFFEURS, WAREHOUSEMEN AND HELPERS OF AMERICA, LOCAL UNION NO. 25, A.F.L., Defendant, Appellant, v. W. L. MEAD, Inc., Plaintiff, Appellee (two cases).
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

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John D. O'Reilly, Jr., and Richard S. Sullivan, Boston, Mass., with whom Stephen J. D'Arcy, Jr., Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellant.

Daniel J. Buckley, Jr., Arlington, Mass., with whom Bernard B. Gould, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellee.

Before MAGRUDER, Chief Judge, and WOODBURY and HARTIGAN, Circuit Judges.

Rehearing Denied in No. 4995 March 22, 1956.

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge.

W. L. Mead, Inc., plaintiff-appellee herein, is an Ohio corporation engaged in the business of common carrier of general commodities in interstate commerce. Defendant-appellant is a labor organization representing employees of W. L. Mead, Inc., at the latter's Boston terminal.

On October 11, 1954, plaintiff filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts a complaint under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C.A. § 185, seeking to recover damages against the defendant Union caused by a strike instituted by the Union in alleged violation of a collective bargaining agreement, and seeking, further, an injunction against the Union forbidding the continuance of said strike and the accompanying picketing.

An order was entered by the district court denying an application by the plaintiff for a temporary injunction against the strike and peaceful picketing, on the ground that the injunctive relief sought was precluded by § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, D.C., 125 F.Supp. 331. On appeal, we affirmed this interlocutory order. 217 F.2d 6.

Upon remand of the case, the district court on December 2, 1954, upon the basis of findings and rulings contained in an opinion simultaneously filed, D. C., 126 F.Supp. 466, entered an order deciding that defendant Union was liable for damages for breach of contract, "the case to stand for a determination of the amount." In our No. 4950 the Union attempted to appeal from this obviously unappealable interlocutory order, and this particular appeal must necessarily be dismissed.

After further proceedings, the district court entered a "final judgment" on March 21, 1955, ordering that W. L. Mead, Inc., recover from the Union the sum of $359,000 as damages caused by the strike in breach of the collective bargaining agreement, and ordering dismissal of defendant's counterclaim for damages and for specific enforcement of the arbitration provisions of the agreement. 129 F.Supp. 313. The Union took a timely appeal from this final judgment, which is No. 4995 on our docket.

Jurisdiction of the complaint in the court below is rested upon § 301(a) of the Taft-Hartley Act, reading as follows, 61 Stat. 156:

"Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this Act, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties."

At the threshold, appellant insists that § 301 is unconstitutional, as being beyond the power of Congress to confer jurisdiction upon the lower federal courts.

On this constitutional issue, it is obvious that the decision in Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 1955, 348 U.S. 437, 75 S.Ct. 489, 99 L.Ed. 510, does not constitute a controlling precedent. It is true that in the Westinghouse case the opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter, speaking for himself and Justices Burton and Minton, does suggest certain doubts as to the constitutionality of § 301, doubts which he found it unnecessary to resolve because he adopted a construction of § 301 permitting a conclusion that the Congress had not intended, by § 301, to confer jurisdiction upon the federal district courts to entertain the particular sort of cause of action involved in that case. It does not appear that the five other justices who participated in the Westinghouse decision had any constitutional doubts as to the validity of § 301.

In the case at bar, we cannot avoid a decision as to the constitutionality of § 301 because the conclusion is inescapable, from the terms of that section, that Congress intended to confer upon the federal district courts jurisdiction to entertain complaints by an employer against a union, for damages resulting from the breach by the union of the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, irrespective of diversity of citizenship.

Congress cannot confer upon the lower federal courts a jurisdiction beyond the cases to which the judicial power of the United States extends under Art. III of the Constitution. Is the present case one "in Law and Equity, arising under * * * the Laws of the United States * * *"? As we understand appellant's argument, it is that Congress has not prescribed any federal cause of action to be enforced in a suit under § 301; that the substantive law to be applied in such a case has its origin in state law; and that, absent diversity of citizenship, Congress cannot confer upon the federal courts jurisdiction to entertain such a cause of action calling for the application of state law.

Of course, the basic constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act, as an exercise of the commerce power, is beyond question. N. L. R. B. v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 1937, 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893; N. L. R. B. v. Fainblatt, 1939, 306 U.S. 601, 59 S.Ct. 668, 83 L.Ed. 1014. "The legislative history of the Act goes far to indicate that the purpose of the statute was to compel employers to bargain collectively with their employes to the end that employment contracts binding on both parties should be made." N. L. R. B. v. Sands Mfg. Co., 1939, 306 U.S. 332, 342, 59 S.Ct. 508, 518, 83 L.Ed. 682. If it was the basic purpose of the Act to serve the cause of industrial peace by encouraging the processes of collective bargaining and the making of collective bargaining agreements, it would certainly be incidentally within the commerce power to provide, as a matter of federal law, that such agreements, when made pursuant to the processes established by Congress, should be legally binding upon the parties, and to provide a federal forum for the enforcement of actions for damages based upon a breach of such agreements. Such a cause of action would be an action arising under a law of the United States, viz., the Labor Management Relations Act, and thus would fall within the judicial power of the United States, within the meaning of Art. III of the Constitution. If it were necessary to uphold the constitutional validity of the grant of jurisdiction in § 301, we would be prepared to hold that, to the extent that Congress itself has not prescribed the rules to be applied in a § 301 case, it intended to leave to the federal courts, and ultimately to the Supreme Court of the United States, to formulate and declare the rules as a matter of federal decisional law. We find nothing in the fragmentary, and altogether ambiguous, legislative history of § 301 which would preclude such a conclusion. See United Electrical, Radio & Mach. Workers v. Oliver Corp., 8 Cir., 1953, 205 F.2d 376, 384; Shirley-Herman Co., Inc., v. International Hod Carriers Union, 2 Cir., 1950, 182 F.2d 806; Colonial Hardwood Flooring Co., Inc., v. International Union United Furniture Workers, D.C.Md.1948, 76 F.Supp. 493, affirmed on other grounds, 4 Cir., 1948, 168 F. 2d 33; Wilson & Co., Inc., v. United Packinghouse Workers, D.C.S.D.N.Y. 1949, 83 F.Supp. 162, 165; Ludlow Mfg. & Sales Co. v. Textile Workers Union, D. C.D.Del.1952, 108 F.Supp. 45; Waialua Agr. Co., Ltd. v. United Sugar Workers, D.C.Hawaii 1953, 114 F.Supp. 243; Note, "Section 301(a) of the Taft-Hartley Act: A Constitutional Problem of Federal Jurisdiction," 57 Yale L. J. 630 (1943).

But we think the constitutionality of § 301 may be sustained, and should be sustained, without resting our decision on the foregoing ground. It is well established that there is some power in Congress to confer upon the federal courts what has occasionally been called a "protective jurisdiction," where resolution of the controversy which the federal courts must thereby determine requires the application of state law — either statutory or common law. We may refer, for example, to Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 1824, 9 Wheat. 737, 6 L.Ed. 204, in which Chief Justice Marshall ruled that incorporation under a congressional charter was sufficient basis to justify under Art. III a special grant of jurisdiction to federal courts to hear cases involving such a corporation. Although the application of this principle to the general "federal question" jurisdictional statute, Pacific Railroad Removal Cases, Texas & Pac. R. Co. v. Kirk, 1885, 115 U.S. 1, 58 S.Ct. 1113, 29 L.Ed. 319, has subsequently been narrowed sharply by statutory limitation, 28 U.S.C. § 1349, so far as we are aware the principle has never been repudiated with reference to the constitutional scope of the judicial power under Art. III. Cases such as Gully v. First National Bank, 1936, 299 U.S. 109, 57 S.Ct. 96, 81 L.Ed. 70, which define the "federal question" jurisdiction of the district courts in terms of whether the plaintiff's cause of action is predicated upon federal law, are dealing with the extent of the general statutory jurisdiction and not with the constitutional scope of jurisdiction, as was the Osborn case.

For another instance of the type of "protective jurisdiction" which we have in mind, see Williams v. Austrian, 1947, 331 U.S. 642, 67 S.Ct. 1443, 91 L.Ed. 1718, in...

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