Brennan v. UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA, ETC.
| Decision Date | 21 January 1981 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 73-957. |
| Citation | 501 F. Supp. 912 |
| Parties | Peter J. BRENNAN, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO-CLC (District 31), Defendant, Edward Sadlowski, Intervenor. Peter J. BRENNAN, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor, Edward Sadlowski-Intervenor Plaintiff, Anthony Tomko-Intervenor Plaintiff, v. UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO-CLC (District 15), (District 31), Edward Sadlowski, intervenor above named and the following counsel for Sadlowski: Joseph L. Rauh, Jr.; Leon Despres; Kenneth J. Yablonski; and Judith Schneider. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
Sylvia T. Horowitz, Dept. of Labor, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.
Michael H. Gottesman, David M. Silberman, Washington, D. C., for defendant.
This matter is before me now on remand from the Court of Appeals on the claims of four attorneys for the Intervenor, but none by the Intervenor, himself. It is here now for the determination of a factual issue as that determination is either supported or not by a preponderance of the evidence in the case. That issue is whether such evidence supports an award of counsel fees to an intervenor's attorneys on an equitable basis on the "common benefit" theory. Brennan v. United Steelworkers of America, 554 F.2d 586, C.A.3, 1977.
Rather, the issue is broadened to the extent that this court must, should or can determine from the evidence adduced by these attorneys whether their aggregate contribution of service brought about a common benefit to the defendant's total membership of what, if any, service was rendered by the three attorney-claimants and one legal assistant, and the proportion of contribution each may have made for entitlement to each one's claim (since each made separate claims) in achieving a successful outcome for the plaintiff-as such commonly benefitted the total membership of the defendant. If indeed each did make a material contribution in his or her way as attorneys for the successful outcome of this action, it is obvious from the evidence produced that the four did not act in unison or act commonly for an aggregate fee, but that each would be entitled to an amount for services so rendered and that each would require individual evidence to support the individual entitlement.
This action was brought originally by Peter J. Brennan, Secretary of Labor (Secretary), against the United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC, Districts 31 and 15 (International).1 Anthony Tomko, the defeated candidate in District 15 and Edward Sadlowski, the defeated candidate in District 31 were eventually permitted to intervene. However, after the plaintiff and defendant requested me to sign an order of court settling the case by ordering a new election in District 31, the intervenor objected to the settlement for pointless reasons and I ordered the settlement. Application for counsel fees for the four intervenor's attorneys followed. I denied this for lack of statutory authority. On appeal, Judge Van Dusen in an opinion for the court determined that the intervenor's attorneys would not be precluded from recovering counsel fees under Title IV of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act under the broader application of the "common benefit" rationale; and if so allowed, the amount of such an award would be a required determination. These two questions, only, were returned for my consideration. Being bound by the law of the Court of Appeals, I proceed to inquire into and adjudicate those two questions by a preponderance of all the evidence in the case.
Of course, I do not disregard two principles expounded first by Judge Aldisert in his dissenting opinion in Brennan v. United Steelworkers of America, supra, at page 613. And second in Mr. Justice White's dissent in Brennan v. United Steelworkers, 435 U.S. 977, 979, 98 S.Ct. 1627, 1628, 56 L.Ed.2d 71 (1978). The principle expounded by Judge Aldisert in his dissenting opinion is disagreement with the proposition "that the consensual agreement to a new election for District Director in Illinois and Indiana conferred a common benefit upon the entire membership of the United Steelworkers of America". The dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice White is to the effect that it would have been improper for an intervenor to interfere (if he did) with the Secretary of Labor's discretionary and exclusive enforcement authority in this area, since "the rationale permitting intervention was not to duplicate the efforts of the Secretary", and further that the exception to the traditional American rule against awarding attorneys' fees on the common benefit theory premised on a court's equity power should not be expanded.
I assigned the original inquiry to United States Magistrate Robert C. Mitchell who broadened the parties' prerogatives to present all the evidence they desired. Thereupon all the parties did provide the magistrate with a large volume of depositions and affidavits, and he personally presided over a large part of the case. From all these the magistrate made findings of fact, conclusions of law and a report and recommendation disallowing the attorneys' fees to the claimants because of a lack of foundation in the evidence to support the wide variety of assertions made by them.
After a lengthy and carefully scrutinized examination of this report and the record made by the parties, I confirm the findings of fact of the magistrate and adopt his recommendation as my findings of fact. But I do not act on this alone. I here set forth additional findings of fact as I supplement the magistrate's report and findings and as I, the presiding judge, have found them to be factual from the evidence and the proceedings in this case before me personally.
As I have already stated, this issue was originally presented to me by an application for attorneys' fees immediately after I signed the order for a settlement. Other than the pleadings, originally, there was no proof presented nor was any request made for a formal hearing or for the privilege of presenting any proof to me of entitlement to attorneys' fees. The total amount demanded seemed exaggerated in view of the knowledge which I had of the case. No evidence or law was presented to me to convince me of any legal entitlement. This last statement explains that the Court of Appeals as well did not have any evidence before it to support any legal entitlement to fees by the claimants, but was required to base its determination of law upon what the claimants only asserted to be facts without the necessary proof which should have been given to me.
As the Court of Appeals said:
"We emphasize that we are not passing on the truth of the statements in the record or on the character of the intervening plaintiffs, as opposed to that of the high-ranking officers of the union, but we are required, under the posture of the case as it existed at the time of the district court order from which the appeal was taken, to take all well-pleaded allegations in the record as true for purposes of this appeal and to construe them in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs." (554 F.2d at pages 589-590)
The pleading raising the issue of fee entitlement was identified as "Verified Application for Attorneys' Fees", and was filed not by the intervenor himself but by three lawyers and one law assistant who assert that they acted in behalf of the intervenor. The inquiry before me, therefore, is towards payment or non-payment of fees to the claimants who, assertedly, had been the intervenor's lawyers in the case before me.
The Court of Appeals, on return to me, provided me with the following:
"Whether an award is warranted and, if so, the amount of such award, is a matter for initial determination by the district court in the light of the broader application of the `common benefit' rationale ..." (554 F.2d at page 608).
Based upon the directive of the Court of Appeals, the claimants were given additional opportunities to present evidence to support their respective contentions and to present sufficient evidence of persuasiveness and the defendant also was given similar opportunities to present evidence if it could contrarywise so that from receipt of the evidence of both parties this court might have sufficient evidence, pro and con, for a determination legally by the preponderance of all of the evidence in the case of whether an award was or was not warranted as now based upon the common benefit rationale in accordance with the guidelines of the Court of Appeals. This, it will be noted, differs from that of the case originally when the question before me was on the theory of whether attorneys' fees were awardable generally as a matter of law in Title IV of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. And so at the time neither the claimants nor parties plaintiff and defendant believed it necessary to present such evidence, pro and con, as is now before me for a judicious determination.
An overall election was held on November 13, 1973 by the defendant, United Steelworkers of America, for the election of directors in its 35 geographically divided, nationwide Districts, encompassing a total membership of 1,400,000 members. After the election, 6 complaints out of 35 Districts came to the Secretary of election irregularities. Then after these six complaints were investigated, the Secretary concluded that only two merited action which was filed in this court. These were, from his findings, District 15 where the defeated candidate, Anthony Tomko, and District 31 where the defeated candidate, Edward Sadlowski, filed complaints. The Department of Labor brought this action on its own accumulated evidence for the procurement of a satisfactory resolution in these two Districts.2
Both Sadlowski in...
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