Apex Hosiery Co v. Leader

• Citation: 128 A.L.R. 1044,60 S.Ct. 982,84 L.Ed. 1311,310 U.S. 469
• Decision Date: 27 May 1940
• Docket Number: No. 638,638
• Parties: APEX HOSIERY CO. v. LEADER et al
• Court: United States Supreme Court

310 U.S. 469

60 S.Ct. 982

84 L.Ed. 1311

APEX HOSIERY CO.

v LEADER et al.

No. 638.

Argued April 1, 2, 1940.

Decided May 27, 1940.

[Syllabus from pages 469-471 intentionally omitted] Mr. Sylvan H. Hirsch, of Philadelphia, Pa., for petitioner.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 472-477 intentionally omitted] Mr. Isadore Katz, of Philadelphia, Pa., for respondents.

[Argument of Counsel from Pages 477-479 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner, a Pennsylvania corporation, is engaged in the manufacture, at its factory in Philadelphia, of hosiery, a substantial part of which is shipped in interstate commerce. It brought the present suit in the federal district court for Eastern Pennsylvania against respondent Federation, a labor organization, and its officers, to recover treble the amount of damage inflicted on it by respondents in conducting a strike at petitioner's factory alleged to be a conspiracy in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. § 1, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1. The trial to a jury resulted in a verdict for petitioner in the sum of $237,310, respondents saving by proper motions and exceptions the question whether the evidence was sufficient to establish a violation of the Sherman Act. The trial judge trebled the verdict of $711,932.55, in conformity to the provision of the Sherman Act as amended by § 4 of the Clayton Act, 1914, 38 Stat. 731, 15 U.S.C. § 15, 15 U.S.C.A. § 15, and gave judgment accordingly. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, 108 F.2d 71, on the ground that the interstate commerce restrained or affected by respondents' acts was unsubstantial, the total shipment of merchandise from petitioner's factory being less than three per cent. of the total value of the output in the entire industry of the country, and on the further ground that the evidence failed to show an intent on the part of respondents to restrain interstate commerce. We granted certiorari February 26, 1940, the questions presented being of importance in the administration of the Sherman Act. 309 U.S. 644, 60 S.Ct. 589, 84 L.Ed. —-.

The facts are undisputed. There was evidence from which the jury could have found as follows. Petitioner employs at its Philadelphia factory about twenty-five hundred persons in the manufacture of hosiery, and manufactures annually merchandise of the value of about $5,000,000. Its principal raw materials are silk and cotton, which are shipped to it from points outside the state. It ships interstate more than 80 per cent. of its finished product, and in the last eight months of 1937 it shipped in all 274,791 dozen pairs of stockings. In April, 1937, petitioner was operating a nonunion shop. A demand of the respondent Federation at that time for a closed shop agreement came to nothing. On May 4, 1937, when only eight of petitioner's employees were members of the Federation, it ordered a strike. Shortly after midday on May 6, 1937, when petitioner's factory was shut down members of the union, employed by other factories in Philadelphia who had stopped work gathered at petitioner's plant. Respondent Leader, president of the Federation, then made a further demand for a closed shop agreement. When this was refused Leader declared a 'sit down strike'. Immediately, acts of violence against petitioner's plant and the employees in charge of it were committed by the assembled mob. It forcibly seized the plant, whereupon, under union leadership, its members were organized to maintain themselves as sit-down strikers in possession of the plant, and it remained in possession until June 23, 1937, when the strikers were forcibly ejected pursuant to an injunction ordered by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 90 F.2d 155, 159; reversed and dismissal ordered as moot in Leader v. Apex Hosiery Co., 302 U.S. 656, 58 S.Ct. 362, 82 L.Ed. 508.

The locks on all gates and entrances of petitioner's plant were changed; only strikers were given keys. No others were allowed to leave or enter the plant without permission of the strikers. During the period of their occupancy, the union supplied them with food, blankets, cots, medical care, and paid them strike benefits. While occupying the factory, the strikers wilfully wrecked machinery of great value, and did extensive damage to other property and equipment of the company. All manufacturing operations by petitioner ceased on May 6th. As the result of the destruction of the company's machinery and plant, it did not resume even partial manufacturing operations until August 19, 1937. The record discloses a lawless invasion of petitioner's plant and destruction of its property by force and violence of the most brutal and wanton character, under leadership and direction of respondents, and without interference by the local authorities.

For more than three months, by reason of respondents' acts, manufacture was suspended at petitioner's plant and the flow of petitioner's product into interstate commerce was stopped. When the plant was seized there were on hand 130,000 dozen pairs of finished hosiery, of a value of about $800,000, ready for shipment on unfilled orders, 80 per cent. of which were to be shipped to points outside the state. Shipment was prevented by the occupation of the factory by the strikers. Three times in the course of the strike respondents refused requests made by petitioner to be allowed to remove the merchandise for the purpose of shipment in filling the orders.

Section 1 of the Sherman Act provides: 'Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.' Only a single question is presented by the record for our decision, whether the evidence which we have detailed, whose verity must be taken to be established by the jury's verdict, establishes a restraint of trade or commerce which the Sherman Act condemns.

It is not denied, and we assume for present purposes, that respondents by substituting the primitive method of trial by combat,¹ for the ordinary processes of justice and more civilized means of deciding an industrial dispute, violated the civil and penal laws of Pennsylvania which authorize the recovery of full compensation and impose criminal penalties for the wrongs done. But in this suit, in which no diversity of citizenship of the parties is alleged or shown, the federal courts are without authority to enforce state laws. Their only jurisdiction is to vindicate such federal right as Congress has conferred on petitioner by the Sherman Act and violence as will appear hereafter, however reprehensible, does not give the federal courts jurisdiction.

At the outset, and before considering the more substantial issues which we regard as decisive of this cause, it is desirable to remove from the field of controversy certain questions which have been much argued here and below, but which we think, in the circumstances of the present case, are irrelevant to decision. We find abundant support for petitioner's contention that the effect of the sit down strike was to restrict substantially the interstate transportation of its manufactured product, so as to bring the acts of respondents by which the restriction was effected within the reach of the commerce power if Congress has seen fit to exercise it. Cessation of petitioner's manufacturing operations, which respondents compelled, indubitably meant the cessation of shipment interstate. The effect upon the commerce resulted naturally and inevitably from the cause. The occupancy of petitioner's factory by the strikers prevented the shipment of the substantial amount of merchandise on hand when the strike was called. In point of the immediacy of the effect of the strikers' acts upon the interstate transportation involved and of its volume, the case does not differ from many others in which we have sustained the Congressional exercise of the commerce power. The national power to regulate commerce is not restricted to that which is nationwide in its scope. Here the strikers' activities were as closely related to interstate commerce and affected it as substantially as numerous other activities not in themselves interstate commerce which have nevertheless been held to be subject to federal statutes enacted in the exercise of the commerce power.² More recently where the statute was by its term applicable and the question was of Congressional power, we have sustained the application of the Wagner Act, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151—166, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 151 166, regulating labor relations 'affecting' interstate commerce to situations no more closely related to the commerce than these, and where the interstate commerce affected was no greater in volume.³ And in the application of the Sherman Act, as we have recently had occasion to point out, it is the nature of the restraint and its effect on interstate commerce and not the amount of the commerce which are the tests of violation. See United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., Inc., 310 U.S. 150, 60 S.Ct. 811, 84 L.Ed. -, note 59. Cf. National Labor Relations Board v. Fainblatt, 306 U.S. 601, 606, 59 S.Ct. 668, 671, 83 L.Ed. 1014.

We think also, as petitioner contends, that the jury's verdict must be taken as a finding supported by evidence that respondents intended to prevent petitioner's shipments in interstate commerce in the sense that respondents must be taken to have intended the natural and probable consequences of their acts. The trial court left it to the jury to say whether the respondents intended to restrain petitioner's interstate shipments, and charged that in a suit to recover damages for violation of the Sherman Act it was necessary for it to find an intent on the part of respondents to cause the prohibited restraint of commerce,⁴ but that such intent might be inferred from their acts in...