Ackerman v. International Longshoremen's & W. Union

• Decision Date: 25 May 1951
• Docket Number: 12301.,No. 12300,12300
• Citation: 187 F.2d 860
• Parties: ACKERMAN, Atty. Gen. v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S & WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION et al. BEVINS, County Atty. et al. v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S & WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION et al. (two cases). ACKERMAN, Atty. Gen. et al. v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S & WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

187 F.2d 860 (1951)

ACKERMAN, Atty. Gen. v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S & WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION et al. BEVINS, County Atty. et al. v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S & WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION et al. (two cases). ACKERMAN, Atty. Gen. et al. v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S & WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION et al.

Nos. 12300, 12301.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

February 28, 1951.

Rehearing Denied May 25, 1951.

Walter D. Ackerman, Jr., Atty. Gen. Territory of Hawaii, J. Garner Anthony, Special Deputy Atty. Gen., Rhoda V. Lewis, Asst. Atty. Gen., Richard K. Sharpless, Deputy Atty. Honolulu, T. H., for appellants.

Bouslog & Symonds and Harriet Bouslog, all of Honolulu, T. H., for appellees.

Thomas M. Waddoups, Samuel P. King, Edward N. Sylva, H. R. Hewitt, W. B. Stephenson and J. Donovan Flint, all of Honolulu, T. H., for Bar Association of Hawaii, as amicus curiae.

Before DENMAN, Chief Judge, ORR and POPE, Circuit Judges.

POPE, Circuit Judge.

These are appeals from judgments in two actions brought by the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), a labor union, and by certain individual members of that union, to enjoin the prosecution of four criminal proceedings pending in the circuit court of the Territory of Hawaii, one for riot and conspiracy, and three for riot. The court below entered final decrees granting permanent injunctions as prayed, against the Attorney General of the Territory, the County Attorney and Deputy County Attorney of the County of Maui, and in one case the County Chief of Police.

The criminal charges grew out of certain disorders which occurred during separate strikes by sugarworkers, and pineapple workers, members of the ILWU union. On the morning of October 16, 1946, during the sugarworkers strike, some three to four hundred members of that group were in a picket line, four columns deep, before the entrance to the sugar mill of Maui Agricultural Company at Paia, on the Island of Maui. Five workmen employed in the mill appeared for the purpose of crossing the picket line and going to work. The same men had attempted to pass through to work the previous day, but had been prevented because the pickets stood shoulder to shoulder. On the 16th a number of police were on hand.¹ As the mill whistle blew the five men, escorted by the police, started toward the mill entrance. Two hundred of the pickets converged on the five men and pushed them back. Upon a second attempt to pass the five workmen and the police were pushed back 10 or 12 feet farther. This ended the attempts to enter the mill. There is no finding that any blows were struck.

In consequence of this incident some 75 men have been indicted, charged with riot and conspiracy under the Territorial unlawful assembly and riot act, Chap. 277 Rev.Law of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 11570-11584, and the Territorial conspiracy statute, Rev.Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 11120.²

The other three criminal proceedings grew out of incidents later occurring in connection with the pineapple workers strike, on the Island of Lanai, also in the County of Maui. On July 14, 1947, as several supervisory employees of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, not members of the union, were about to load upon a barge some pineapples picked before the strike and then in bins upon the wharf, about 300 union pickets led by union "picket policemen" ran toward the men on the wharf, yelling "at the tops of their voices", caught and beat one of the men, chased and "punched at" another, forcing him and another man to jump into the water to escape, broke open the bins and threw pineapples at the barge and tug and at the men in the water.

Two complaints, charging riot, were filed against persons accused of participating in this incident. In one case eleven defendants, and in the other, 36 defendants, were committed after waiving preliminary examination, to await the action of the grand jury.

On the day following the incident at the wharf, 20 to 25 persons headed by "union police" with arm bands, went to the rooms of two non-striking truck drivers employed by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company on the Island of Lanai, and administered "a severe beating" to both of them. A complaint, charging riot, was filed against five persons charged with participating in this affair. They also were committed awaiting action by the grand jury. The prosecution of these defendants and of the other defendants similarly bound over, has proceeded no further by reason of the injunctions issued by the court below.

The individual plaintiffs in these actions are the defendants in the four criminal proceedings mentioned, plus two officials of the union who purport to sue on behalf of themselves and all other members of the union in the Territory.

Judgment in No. 12301 was based upon a complaint seeking to enjoin further prosecution of the proceeding in which the indictment was returned. The complaint in No. 12300 sought similar relief in respect to the three proceedings in which commitments had been made. Both complaints allege that in furtherance of the objectives of the strikes, which were to obtain better wages, hours, and conditions of employment, the individual plaintiffs engaged in "lawful, peaceful and constitutionally protected activities of speech, press and assemblage and of peaceful picketing." The unlawful assembly and riot statute and the conspiracy statute are attacked as unconstitutional in that they are alleged to deprive plaintiffs of their rights of free speech, press and assemblage and will subject them to criminal prosecutions if they exercise their constitutional rights. It is alleged that the grand jury which found the indictment was chosen and composed in an unconstitutional manner. Prayer was for injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the criminal statutes mentioned, that prosecution of the criminal proceedings be enjoined, and that the statutes be held unconstitutional.

The trial court³ recognized that the prayer for an injunction restraining the prosecution of criminal proceedings posed serious difficulties, and in this connection quoted from the opinion of Chief Justice Stone in Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157, 163, 63 S.Ct. 877, 881, 87 L.Ed. 1324, as follows: "It is a familiar rule that courts of equity do not ordinarily restrain criminal prosecutions. No person is immune from prosecution in good faith for his alleged criminal acts. Its imminence, even though alleged to be in violation of constitutional guaranties, is not a ground for equity relief since the lawfulness or constitutionality of the statute or ordinance on which the prosecution is based may be determined as readily in the criminal case as in a suit for an injunction. * * * Where the threatened prosecution is by state officers for alleged violations of a state law, the state courts are the final arbiters of its meaning and application, subject only to review by this Court on federal grounds appropriately asserted. Hence the arrest by the federal courts of the processes of the criminal law within the states, and the determination of questions of criminal liability under state law by a federal court of equity, are to be supported only on a showing of danger of irreparable injury `both great and immediate.'"

But the trial court held that the facts of this case were such as to take it outside of the ordinary rule that courts of equity will not enjoin criminal prosecutions; that it involved exceptional circumstances which permit injunctive relief, and that there has been a disclosure of the "irreparable injury `both great and immediate'", mentioned in Douglas v. City of Jeannette, supra.

The court found two such special circumstances. First, it said, "All collective bargaining in the Territory of Hawaii in our opinion is substantially affected by the two statutes⁴ as well as by the prosecutions conducted or about to be carried on thereunder. Approximately thirty thousand members of the ILWU and the union itself necessarily feel the impact of the statutes as does each employer in the sugar and pineapple industries. All labor relations in the Islands are clouded by them. On the records presently before us we think it is fair to state that equable or amicable relations between employers and employees in the Territory of Hawaii are impossible while the statutes stand. The repercussions which arise from the enforcement of these statutes of the Territory are such as to cause great and irreparable harm and damage to all labor relations in Hawaii."

This portion of the opinion of the court was bottomed upon the case of A. F. L. v. Watson, 327 U.S. 582, 66 S.Ct. 761, 90 L.Ed. 873. The trial court's opinion quoted from that case what was there said of the requirement of proof of "irreparable injury which is clear and imminent" as follows: "That is a strict test. But we think appellants satisfy it. We reach that conclusion on the basis of the allegations concerning the disruption of the collective bargaining processes and the injury to the unions and to the employers alike, if the closed-shop agreement is outlawed. As we have said, it is averred that there are about 500 contracts with Florida employers containing closed-shop agreements * *". 82 F.Supp. 65, 109.

We are unable to perceive any resemblance between the facts here and those in A. F. L. v. Watson, supra. There it appeared that the plaintiff labor unions were engaged in negotiating closed shop agreements, as they asserted they had the right to do by virtue of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. and that the proceedings which the Attorney General of Florida proposed to institute against them, pursuant to the newly adopted Florida constitutional amendment, was an imminent threat to an entire system of collective bargaining, involving 500 contracts, and many thousands of employees.

Here there is no showing of any attempted collective bargaining, or other legitimate union activity with which any act here charged to the...