Allen Bradley Co. v. LOCAL UNION NO. 3, ETC.

• Decision Date: 30 September 1941
• Citation: 41 F. Supp. 727
• Parties: ALLEN BRADLEY CO. et al. v. LOCAL UNION NO. 3, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

41 F. Supp. 727

ALLEN BRADLEY CO. et al. v. LOCAL UNION NO. 3, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, et al.

District Court, S. D. N. Y.

September 30, 1941.

McLanahan, Merritt & Ingraham, of New York City, for plaintiffs.

Frank P. Walsh and Harold Stern, both of New York City, for defendants.

LEIBELL, District Judge.

Ordered, that the above entitled case be and it hereby is referred to John Kirkland Clark, as special master to hear and determine all issues of law and fact therein and report thereon to this Court with all convenient speed.

CLARK, Special Master.

The difficult problems presented by this case are whether the actions of the defendant local union and its officers constitute a violation of the provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1-7, 15 note, which forbids combinations in restraint of interstate trade, and, if so, whether the plaintiffs are entitled to injunctive relief.

The defendant union, by the exercise of its economic force, has unionized the entire industry of large scale installation of electrical equipment in New York City and has likewise unionized the factories in New York City which produce certain types of electrical equipment essential in the building construction of today. The electrical contractors who employ members of the union are united in associations. The manufacturers are members of an association. The union has brought about a joint arrangement through the cooperation, voluntary or enforced, of the contractor groups and the manufacturing group with the union, whereby certain types of electrical equipment made by the local manufacturers are the only articles of that type permitted to be installed in electrical construction work in New York City. The natural and necessary effect has been to restrict the market, raise the cost to contractors, builders, and ultimately the community, and to create a barrier which excludes from installation in New York City similar products made by the plaintiffs, which were formerly widely sold in New York City through interstate commerce, for use in building construction here.

The plaintiffs are eleven corporations engaged in the manufacture of electrical goods and appliances, Allen Bradley Company, Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, Clark Controller Company, Colt's Patent Fire Arms Mfg. Co., Cutler-Hammer, Inc., the Electric Controller & Mfg. Co., General Electric Company, Monitor Controller Company, Square D Company, Trumbull Electric Manufacturing Co., and Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. They maintain plants throughout the United States and their manufactured goods are widely distributed in the course of interstate commerce. They employ tens of thousands of workers, who are represented by various unions, as bargaining agents, in many cases as a result of elections or other steps pursuant to the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq.

Each of the plaintiffs is engaged in manufacturing various types of electrical equipment and materials, such as electrical switch-boards, panel-boards, distribution-boards, power switches, safety switches, knife switches, enclosed switches, cut-out boxes, air circuit-breakers, motor starters and controls, and other industrial control apparatus, lighting fixtures, lighting sockets, signalling devices, conduits, and wire and cable for the transmission of electrical current.

The business which the plaintiffs claim has been blocked by the activities of the union and its affiliates amounted to millions of dollars.

The defendants are Local Union No. 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, an organization affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and certain of the Local's officers and agents.

The union membership, at the conclusion of the hearings, included 16,000 or 17,000 workers, journeymen engaged in electrical trades and employees of manufacturers making materials used in connection with electrical installation.

The defendant union, while a unit of an organization affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and originally consisting solely of journeymen electricians engaged in installation work, has branched out, in recent years, into broader fields, so that approximately (if not more than) half of its membership is composed of workers other than electricians, an organizational union along lines similar to those of the Congress of Industrial Organization.

The plaintiffs sue to obtain a judgment declaring that the defendants, in conjunction with electrical contractors and manufacturers of electrical goods and appliances in New York City, have committed acts violative of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Act of July 2, 1890, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S. C.A. § 1; that, under the provisions of the Clayton Act, Act of October 15, 1914, 38 Stat. 737, 15 U.S.C.A. § 26, an injunction should issue restraining the union in conjunction with the other alleged co-conspirators from barring certain products of the plaintiffs from entering into the installation of electrical equipment in New York, through interstate commerce.

The defendants deny that any action on their part constituted an interference with interstate commerce; they maintain that all of the activities in which they engaged were legitimate labor activities dictated by their self-interest and falling into the sphere designated in the latest opinion on the subject handed down by the Supreme Court as "licit and not illicit"; and that, in any event, this court is without jurisdiction by reason of the provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, Act of March 23, 1932, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U.S. C.A. §§ 101-115 depriving the courts of the United States of any power to issue injunctions in cases where a labor dispute exists in such a situation as is presented in the case at bar.

The action was begun December 9, 1935. Issue was originally joined by an answer on February 6, 1936. An amended complaint was served on April 2, 1937, and issue was finally joined by an answer to the amended complaint on May 7, 1937.

Meanwhile, an action for treble damages was brought by eight of these plaintiffs (omitting Allen Bradley Company, Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, and Monitor Controller Company), with whom two additional parties joined, the Okonite Company and John J. Whitman, doing business as the Reading Chandelier Works. In the treble damage suit, all of the present defendants are parties, and, in addition, there are joined as individual defendants, Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., John J. Sullivan, and William A. Hogan. The issue was joined in this case at some time prior to March 12, 1937, on which date the damage suit appeared on the Calendar of the United States District Court, and, by stipulation, it was marked off.

In the summer of 1937, the parties decided that the trial in the case at bar, instead of being conducted by a Judge of the United States District Court, should, for the convenience of the parties and counsel and the most efficient handling of the tremendous bulk of material, be referred to a Special Master to hear and determine the issues in the case. Thereafter, and on July 1, 1937, the parties entered into a stipulation reciting that they "are desirous that the above-entitled action be referred to a Special Master to hear and determine all issues of law and fact herein", and the order of reference bearing the same date, directed that the Special Master "hear and determine all issues of law and fact therein". It was then anticipated that six or eight months of hearings three days a week would suffice, and that the matter could be disposed of within a year. Instead, hearings which began in October, 1937, were not concluded until March 7, 1940. Thirty-one volumes of typewritten testimony and argument were taken in over 200 hearings, covering over 25,000 pages. More than 1,700 exhibits were submitted and over 400 witnesses called. To elucidate the issues, counsel have presented over three thousand pages of printed briefs.

When it is considered that the testimony involved sharp issues of fact covering hundreds of different incidents and scores of different jobs, the task of reaching a conclusion as to which of such issues are sufficiently material to warrant comment in a decision is, in itself, a tremendous task. Therefore, for the most part, only the general progress of developments involved in the creation of the situation which constitutes the basis for the case at bar will be taken up, with occasional illustrations as to incidents throwing light upon that development.

This being an equitable proceeding and many of the events deemed material having occurred after the beginning of the proceeding, the issues grew constantly more complicated and involved. Meanwhile, also, both before and after the conclusion of the testimony, rulings of the courts on important problems involved in the case at bar for the first time reached the final authority, the United States Supreme Court.

After the conclusion of the testimony and the submission of the original briefs, counsel argued the case orally for four days. Since the oral argument, the Supreme Court has handed down several important decisions bearing upon the issues involved, each of which counsel has felt strongly supported their side of the case, and additional briefs have been filed to clarify such claims.

The Court had the benefit of the assistance of counsel on both sides of the case, who were outstanding leaders of the bar, particularly in the complicated and involved problems arising from the relationship between capital, management and labor, interstate commerce and the "interlacing statutes" known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Clayton Act and the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Frank P. Walsh, chief counsel for the defendants, died during the course of the proceeding, but his associate proceeded to the conclusion of the case with unimpaired skill, ability and vigor, despite the heavy burden thus thrown...