Benz v. Compania Naviera Hidalgo, SA

• Decision Date: 21 May 1956
• Docket Number: No. 14663,14664,14665.,14663
• Citation: 233 F.2d 62
• Parties: William BENZ et al., Appellants, v. COMPANIA NAVIERA HIDALGO, S.A., Appellee. M. D. MacRAE et al., Appellants, v. COMPANIA NAVIERA HIDALGO, S.A., Appellee. Jeff MORRISON et al., Appellants, v. COMPANIA NAVIERA HIDALGO, S.A., Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

233 F.2d 62 (1956)

William BENZ et al., Appellants, v. COMPANIA NAVIERA HIDALGO, S.A., Appellee.

M. D. MacRAE et al., Appellants, v. COMPANIA NAVIERA HIDALGO, S.A., Appellee.

Jeff MORRISON et al., Appellants, v. COMPANIA NAVIERA HIDALGO, S.A., Appellee.

Nos. 14663, 14664, 14665.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

April 6, 1956.

Rehearings Denied May 7, 21, 1956.

Tanner & Carney, K. C. Tanner, Richard R. Carney, Portland, Or., for appellants.

Wood, Matthiessen, Wood & Tatum, John D. Mosser, Gunther F. Krause, Portland, Or., for appellee.

Before BONE and ORR, Circuit Judges, and MURPHY, District Judge.

MURPHY, District Judge.

These are appeals from judgments awarding damages in three separate suits brought by the appellee, a Panamanian corporation, in the district court. Appellee is the owner and operator of the S. S. Riviera, a vessel of Liberian registry. The appellants, defendants in the several actions below, are citizens of the State of Oregon and of states or countries different from that of the plaintiff. Appellants were sued individually as officers of three voluntary unincorporated labor associations, and also as representatives of classes composed of the members of their respective labor associations.

These cases were before us previously, on appeals from interlocutory injunctions issued against the same appellants to restrain them from picketing appellee's vessel. Benz v. Compania Naviera Hidalgo, S.A., 9 Cir., 1953, 205 F.2d 944. The vessel had sailed before the case came on for hearing and we accordingly dismissed for mootness, returning the case to the district court for trial of the damage claims. We directed that those claims be prosecuted free from the effects of res judicata arising from the injunctions, and generally "as free from the effects of such injunctions, as if the same had not been issued." Id., at page 947.

The basic facts are these: The Riviera arrived at the Port of Portland, Oregon, on September 3, 1952. Her crew were all foreign nationals, chiefly Germans and British, who between March and August, 1952, had signed British articles in Germany, agreeing to work on the ship on a voyage from Bremen, Germany, for a period of two years, and agreeing that British maritime board conditions should apply to their wages, hours of employment and working conditions. About September 9th, the crew entered upon a strike and refused to leave the vessel. They remained on the vessel and on strike until September 26, 1952, when they were required by an order and decree in admiralty issued out of the district court to leave the ship.

The district court found that the company had lived up to all of its obligations under the articles, that the vessel was seaworthy, and that the purpose of the strike was to secure shorter articles and higher wages than those agreed upon. On October 14, 1952, the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, pursuant to resolution duly passed by its members, took up the picketing of the ship, which had been carried out hitherto by the striking crew itself. From October 14th to November 26, 1952, when it was enjoined from further picketing by the district court, the Sailors' Union of the Pacific picketed the vessel for the purpose, as the district court found, of compelling the company to rehire the striking crew members at higher wages, different conditions, and for shorter articles than those agreed upon.

On November 28, 1952, two days after the injunction against the Sailors' Union of the Pacific was issued, another picket line was established at the vessel by Local 90 of the National Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots. The district court found that the purpose of the picketing was to enforce the demands of the crew and to assist the Sailors' Union of the Pacific in enforcing the demand of that union that the crew be rehired on the conditions and terms demanded. On December 8, 1952, the National Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots, Local 90, was enjoined from further picketing.

On December 10, 1952, another picket line was established by the Atlantic and Gulf District, Seafarers' International Union, and maintained until restrained by the district court on December 12, 1952. The district court found that the purpose of the picketing by the Atlantic and Gulf District, Seafarers' International Union, was the same as that of the National Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots, Local 90, that is, to assist the Sailors' Union of the Pacific in enforcing its demand that the striking crew be rehired on different terms than those agreed upon, and to compel the company to meet that demand.

The district court further found that all picketing was at all times peaceful and orderly, that the refusal of shore employees engaged in repair and loading of the vessel to cross the picket lines was directly caused by the picketing of the appellants, and assessed damages in accordance with the number of days' delay caused by each of the appellants respectively.

Appellants' specifications of error, so far as they relate to questions of law, may be grouped under three general categories. It is argued that the district court erred in concluding that (1) it had jurisdiction to try these damage cases, (2) the acts complained of constituted actionable torts under Oregon law, and (3) that these were proper class suits and that the judgments could be enforced against the assets of unincorporated associations.

(1) The district court's jurisdiction is attacked, first, by reason of the Norris-LaGuardia Act's prohibitions against injunctions in labor disputes. See Title 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 101-114. The appeals before us, however, have nothing to do with the injunctions issued by the district court in the previous litigation between the parties at bar. The Norris-LaGuardia Act is not involved in these cases, and is not discussed further.

The district court's jurisdiction is next assailed on the ground that the picketing by the labor associations here involved is within the protection, or alternatively, prohibition of the National Labor Relations Act as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 141 et seq.

The district court's jurisdiction derived from 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332(a) (2). In granting a remedy, it was applying the tort law of Oregon. The question posed, therefore, is whether the reach of the federal labor legislation extends to take exclusive cognizance of the cause, forestalling the exercise of jurisdiction by courts acting as courts of enforcement of state law, and relegating the dispute to the National Labor Relations Board. It may be noted that no party to any of these cases at any time had resort to the Board.

Appellee argues, on the basis of cases holding that the collective bargaining provisions of general labor legislation are not applicable to seamen during the period of valid articles, Southern Steamship Co. v. N.L.R.B., 1942, 316 U.S. 31, 62 S.Ct. 886, 86 L.Ed. 1246; Rees v. U. S., 4 Cir., 1938, 95 F.2d 784; Peninsular & Occidental Steamship Co. v. N.L. R.B., 5 Cir., 1938, 98 F.2d 411, that the picketing here undertaken by the labor associations to enforce the demands of a crew of a vessel in violation of their articles is not within the scope of the conduct regulated by the National Labor Relations Act, as amended. Appellee argues further that, regardless of the applicability of general American labor legislation to American maritime labor disputes, Congress did not intend to subject this dispute to the National Labor Relations Act, as amended. This is a dispute between a foreign employer and a foreign crew having signed foreign articles in a foreign port to serve on a foreign ship. The sole points of contact with America in this case are the eruption of the dispute in an American port, and the participation of American labor associations in the dispute by means of picketing.

It may well be that American laws should not be construed to apply, without some more explicit Congressional indication than we are able to find in the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, to situations with as many points of foreign contact as the situation at bar. Cf. Lauritzen v. Larsen, 1953, 345 U.S. 571, 73 S.Ct. 921, 97 L.Ed. 1254. (Applicability of Jones Act, 46 U.S.C.A. § 688, to foreign seamen injured on foreign vessel. See especially the discussion of Mr. Justice Jackson, for the Court, 345 U.S. at page 581 et seq., 73 S.Ct. 921.) The National Labor Relations Board, furthermore, seems to have taken the position that it has no jurisdiction to determine the collective bargaining agent for the crew of a foreign vessel. Sailors' Union of the Pacific, Case No. 20, R.C. 809, C.C.H. Labor Reports, 1950-51, N.L.R.B. Decisions, Par. 1,081, May 1, 1950.

However, it does not seem to us necessary to decide the question whether and to what extent the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, would extend to the controversy before us. The narrow question before us is not whether the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, applies to this dispute at all, but whether it has pre-empted the field so completely as to bar Oregon from giving a remedy by means of an action in tort for the damage done by the picketing here involved. That question seems to us decisively settled by the Supreme Court in United Construction Workers v. Laburnum Construction Co., 1954, 347 U.S. 656, 74 S.Ct. 833, 98 L.Ed. 1025. In that case, damages were sought in a state court for harm done by picketing, including harm done by violent picketing. The Court said, with respect to the union's argument there:

"They claim that state courts accordingly are excluded not only from enjoining future unfair labor practices and thus colliding with the Board, as occurred in Garner v. Teamster\'s Union, 346 U.S. 485, 74 S.Ct. 161 98 L.Ed. 228, but that state courts are excluded also from entertaining common-law tort actions for the recovery of damages caused by such conduct. The latter exclusion is the

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