Arkansas Oak Flooring Co. v. United Mine Workers of America

• Decision Date: 25 April 1955
• Docket Number: Nos. 41797,41983,s. 41797
• Citation: 227 La. 1109,81 So.2d 413
• Parties: ARKANSAS OAK FLOORING COMPANY v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA et al.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 413

81 So.2d 413

227 La. 1109

ARKANSAS OAK FLOORING COMPANY v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA et al.

Nos. 41797, 41983.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

April 25, 1955.

Rehearing Denied May 31, 1955.

James I. McCain, New Orleans, for defendants-appellants.

Stafford & Pitts, Alexandria, Richard C. Keenan, New Orleans, for plaintiff-appellee.

FOURNET, Chief Justice.

The United Mine Workers of America, District 50, and twelve other named defendants ^{1 1} are appealing devolutively from the judgments of the lower court granting to the plaintiff, Arkansas Oak Flooring Company, a preliminary and permanent injunction ² restraining them 'and any and all other persons acting for or on' their behalf 'from picketing on, near or about plaintiff's property * * * just off Texas Avenue in the City of Alexandria, Rapides Parish, Louisiana.'

The facts pertinent to a decision of the issues raised in this case are, substantially, that the Arkansas Oak Flooring Company (admittedly engaged in interstate commmerce), with principal offices in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, operates a sawmill and flooring plant near the City of Alexandria, Louisiana, where it is engaged in the business of manufacturing lumber and oak flooring. The employees in this plant had been unorganized for a period of some four years and there was no dispute between the employer and employees with respect to working conditions, wages, or hours, when, in October or November of 1953, James L. Ledbetter, claiming to represent the United Mine Workers of America, District 50--a Union that has admittedly failed and refused to comply with the requirements of Section 9(f), (g) and (h) of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 ³--arrived in Alexandria for the exclusive purpose of contacting the plaintiff's employees, with the avowed intention of ultimately compelling recognition of this Union as the bargaining representative of such workers. Purportedly having authority from some 174 of the plaintiff's 225 employees, exclusive of officers, inspectors, and foremen, who had allegedly joined the Union, Ledbetter, on February 23, 1954, at a time when he knew the plant manager was out of the state, presented his demand for recognition of the Union to the assistant manager, who advised Ledbetter that inasmuch as the Union was not recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, he would not recognize it, and further advised that if Ledbetter desired to negotiate further he would have to take the matter up with the company officials in Pine Bluff, where all matters of policy were handled. Instead, a strike was called to compel recognition of the Union on March 1, 1954, and the picket line thrown up in connection therewith caused a large number of the plaintiff's employees to refuse to cross the line and report for work, with the result that the employer's operations were greatly curtailed and irreparable loss was sustained.

The company thereupon secured a temporary restraining order with a rule to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not issue, and, ultimately, a permanent injunction be granted. On the return day, the Union excepted to its citation through Ledbetter, contending that as an unincorporated labor organization with no corporate existence in Louisiana it could not be impleaded into court under its group or company name; further, that the court had no jurisdiction rationae personae since Ledbetter was not authorized to receive process for the members of the group or to stand in judgment for the Union. On this same day, all defendants excepted to the petition on the ground of vagueness, and also to the court's jurisdiction rationae materiae, the latter exception being predicated on the assertion that the National Labor Relations Board alone has jurisdiction to halt the peaceful picketing of an employer whose business is affected by interstate commerce. In answer, all defendants generally denied the allegations of the petition, reiterated the matters set out in the exceptions, and asserted, additionally, that the right to strike and to picket peacefully as an expression of free discussion is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and Section 3 of Article I of the LSA-Constitution of Louisiana.

The exceptions were overruled and the preliminary injunction granted, which, following trial on the merits, was made permanent. These appeals followed.

Counsel for the defendants is contesting here, under specifications of error set out in brief, the correctness of the trial judge's ruling with respect (1) to the citation of the Union in its association name and through Ledbetter, (2) the state's assumption of jurisdiction rationae materiae despite the fact the plaintiff is engaged in interstate commerce and an unfair labor practice is involved, and (3) in any event, the right of a state court, under Louisiana law, to enjoin peaceful picketing of an employer's plant to secure recognition as the employee bargaining representative.

The contention of the appellants that the court had no jurisdiction of the Union rationae personae since Ledbetter was without authority to receive process of citation for the group or to stand in judgment is based upon the generally recognized rule that obtains in the common law that in the absence of an enabling or permissive statute an unincorporated voluntary association is not capable of being sued in its common or association name. But this rule is untenable in Louisiana under the express provisions of the LSA-Revised Statutes in this state which provide that 'Any voluntary association may be sued on any obligation incurred for the benefit of such association, in the name of the said association and all legal services in such matters shall be made upon the managing official of such voluntary association and in the absence of such official, then upon any other official, and in the absence of all officials, then upon any member of such association.' ⁴ The fact that Ledbetter was not authorized to accept citation in the instant case is, therefore, of no moment.

As pointed out in the recent case of Godchaux Sugars, Inc., v. Chaisson, 227 La. 146, 78 So.2d 673, 680, 'To hold that an unincorporated group must be individually named and cited before it is susceptible to restraint would be equivalent to holding that, by subterfuge of unincorporation, group action transcends individual rights and is unlimited and unrestrictable except within the purview of the criminal statute, or that corporations unauthorized by law cannot be restrained from doing irreparable injury except through the process of individual identification.' The reason given therefor is that "time is of the essence in the nature of the relief prayed for in this case (and) to require the ascertainment of individual membership of an unincorporated association and thereafter individual citation as conditions precedent to the granting of relief,--and thereby require plaintiffs to gather information almost exclusively within the knowledge of defendants, without whose help it would be impracticable or perhaps even impossible to gather, and from whom hindrance and obstruction, rather than cooperation, could be reasonably anticipated,--would be tantamount to a denial of relief."

The second, and most important, error allegedly committed by the trial judge, that is, his failure to sustain the plea to the jurisdiction rationae materiae, is predicated upon the theory that this case involves an unfair labor practice in a dispute affecting interstate commerce and is, therefore, controlled by the landmark decision in Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U.S. 485, 74 S.Ct. 161, 164, 98 L.Ed. 228, holding that such matters are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board.

In the Garner case the Supreme Court of the United States simply gave added emphasis to the well settled jurisprudence that congressional legislation curtails state action in the field intended to be covered and that state action is, within that particular sphere, superseded; consequently, that Congress, by the adoption of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (referred to as the Wagner Act), and its amendment in 1947 by the Labor Management Relations Act (known as the Taft-Hartley law), did, with relation to the rights there conferred, place within the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board the enforcement of the rights and privileges there delineated, which enforcement was to be carried out through the administrative scheme therein devised, as supplemented by the judicial remedies prescribed. The court was careful to point out, however, that the Act 'leaves much to the states, though Congress has refrained from telling us how much', leaving it to the judiciary to 'spell out from conflicting indications of congressional will the area in which state action is still permissible', and that the Board has no jurisdiction in those zones that are either "governable by the state or * * * entirely ungoverned." As to these spheres, the court has declined to find an implied exclusion of state power and, instead, permits the states to exercise their "historic powers over such traditionally local matters" as injurious conduct which the Board is without express power to prevent, public safety and order and the use of streets and highways, as well as in those cases where the Board 'would decline to exercise its powers once its jurisdiction was invoked.'

However, the labor activity sought to be restrained in the Garner case was peaceful stranger picketing for the purpose of coercing the employer to compel his employees to join a union--an activity, as demonstrated in the opinion, specifically denounced as an unfair labor practice in the Act. In the instant case the picketing was engaged in for the sole purpose of compelling the employer to recognize as the legally constituted agent of its employees a union that has no legal status...