Britt v. Suckle

Decision Date11 May 1978
Docket NumberCiv. A. No. S-76-49-CA.
Citation453 F. Supp. 987
PartiesDon BRITT v. Irvin SUCKLE, Braccy's Inc., James E. Brownlee and Brosco, Inc., d/b/a Sherman Foundry.
CourtU.S. District Court — Eastern District of Texas

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Jarvis, Grisham, Sanders, Emerson & Fry, Sherman, Tex., for plaintiff.

Kennedy, Minshew, Evans, Campbell & Cain, Sherman, Tex., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Justice, District Judge.

The plaintiff brings this civil action under the second subsection of 42 U.S.C. § 1985, a part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, whose range has only been adumbrated by the few decisions seeking to construe it. The subsection reads in its entirety as follows:

* * * * * *
If two or more persons in any State or Territory conspire to deter, by force, intimidation, or threat, any party or witness in any court of the United States from attending such court, or from testifying to any matter pending therein, freely, fully, and truthfully, or to injure such party or witness in his person or property on account of his having so attended or testified, or to influence the verdict, presentment, or indictment of any grand or petit juror in any such court, or to injure such juror in his person or property on account of any verdict, presentment, or indictment lawfully assented to by him, or of his being or having been such juror; or if two or more persons conspire for the purpose of impeding, hindering, obstructing, or defeating, in any manner, the due course of justice in any State or Territory, with intent to deny to any citizen the equal protection of the laws, or to injure him or his property for lawfully enforcing, or attempting to enforce, the right of any person, or class of persons, to the equal protection of the laws;
* * * * * *

Plaintiff relies particularly on that part of § 1985(2), following the penultimate semicolon, which deals with impeding the due course of justice in any State or Territory. In its concluding subsection, § 1985 gives a remedy to "the party so injured or deprived" within the terms of the statute, i. e., "an action for the recovery of damages, occasioned by such injury or deprivation, against any one or more of the conspirators." Defendants have moved to dismiss the complaint as failing to state a claim under § 1985(2).

I. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

Plaintiff Don Britt is an adult white male. At the time the events giving rise to this suit were set in motion, he was employed as a general unskilled laborer by defendant Sherman Foundry, a joint venture,1 situated in Grayson County, Texas. The allegations in his complaint paint a very grim picture of life and work at the Sherman Foundry. Summarized, they are as follows: The great majority of non-supervisory employees are members of minority groups, mostly blacks, Chicanos, and Mexicans illegally in the United States, who are, in the main, uneducated and unskilled. Taking advantage of this situation, defendants pay these workers lower wages and fewer benefits than those drawn by the average employee in Grayson County, all the while requiring very arduous labor and maintaining substandard working conditions. Most significantly, according to plaintiff, the Sherman Foundry has pursued a concerted plan to avoid bearing the cost of any industrial accidents, even those caused by its own negligent maintenance of sub-standard working conditions.2 In elaborating his complaint, the plaintiff asserts that the Sherman Foundry is a sweatshop, rife with intentional exploitation of a suppressed class of uneducated minority workers, who, for lack of other employment opportunities, are forced to work there, and who daily face the risk of grave uncompensated injury.

The instant case generates from an injury sustained by plaintiff Britt during the course of his employment at the Sherman Foundry. The plaintiff alleges that the injury was proximately caused by the Foundry's negligence. According to plaintiff, his injury occurred while he was lifting heavy metal blocks, some weighing between 150 and 200 pounds, in an area which was dark, muddy, and strewn with loose debris. All of these factors, plaintiff alleges, contributed to cause his foot to slip at a time when he was lifting an engine block, resulting in severe and permanent back injuries to him. Unable to do any more heavy lifting, plaintiff was allowed by the Foundry to continue working in a less strenuous area for a week or two, after which he was discharged as unfit for work.

The plaintiff asserts that prior to his discharge, he had been holding down a second, part-time job at Waddle Pattern Shop. After his dismissal, plaintiff alleges that, although suffering pain in his back, he was able to continue this additional job, which did not require heavy lifting. It is plaintiff's contention that, subsequent to his discharge from the Sherman Foundry, the facts which form the basis for this civil action began to unfold.3 Plaintiff first consulted a physician, T. C. Lewis, M.D., concerning his back. After obtaining Dr. Lewis' professional opinion that the injury had occurred as a result of the above-described accident, plaintiff sought the advice of the law firm of Brown & Hill on obtaining workmen's compensation benefits. Having learned of plaintiff's activities, defendants contacted Dr. Lewis to tell him they would not pay for plaintiff's medical treatment. They also communicated with Paul Brown, Esquire, of Brown & Hill, to urge him to drop plaintiff's case. Plaintiff was thereafter directed to his present attorney,4 who filed Cause No. 89952, a negligence action, styled Don Britt v. Sherman Foundry Co., in the District Court of Grayson County, Fifteenth Judicial District of Texas.

According to plaintiff, the defendants then contacted Thirn Waddle of Waddle Pattern Shop, and successfully persuaded him to discharge plaintiff. When plaintiff evidenced determination to continue his litigation by noticing the deposition of Messrs. Brownlee and Suckle, the Sherman Foundry, unexpectedly and without a statement of reasons, discharged plaintiff's daughter from her part-time employment at the foundry.5 In addition, plaintiff alleges further unspecified acts taken by defendants to prevent plaintiff's being hired by any person or business in Grayson County.

II. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS
A. Standards for Maintenance of Claim

The gist of plaintiff's complaint is thus as follows: that to avoid bearing any of the financial burden for accidents at the Sherman Foundry, the defendants have conspired to prevent their employees from seeking vindication of their legal right to recover for injuries caused by the Foundry's negligence; and that, to effectuate their purpose of locking Sherman Foundry employees out of the state courts, the defendants have conspired to make an example of any individual who challenges their decision, illegal under state law, not to compensate workers for injuries caused by the employer's own negligence. Claiming to be a victim of the conspiracy, plaintiff here seeks to defeat the alleged invidious scheme under the federal prohibition against conspiracies to obstruct the due course of justice. This court concludes that, as alleged, defendants' acts constitute a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2).

The subsection in issue, 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2), derives from section 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The decision in this case must be guided by two decisions: Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971), and McLellan v. Mississippi Power & Light Co., 545 F.2d 919 (5th Cir. 1977), the authoritative expositors of another part of the original section 2, the current subsection 3 of § 1985.6

In Griffin, the plaintiffs charged a conspiracy on the part of two white adult males who, mistakenly believing the black plaintiffs to be civil rights workers, allegedly detained, assaulted and injured plaintiffs, who were traveling on interstate highways. The complaint further alleged an intent on the part of defendants, who were acting purely as private citizens, to prevent plaintiffs and other black persons from seeking the equal protection of the laws, and from enjoying the equal rights, privileges and immunities of citizens under the laws of the United States and the State of Mississippi. Griffin v. Breckenridge, supra, 403 U.S. at 90-91, 91 S.Ct. 1790. After reviewing "all indicators — text, companion provisions, and legislative history —", id. at 101, 91 S.Ct. at 1798, the Court held that § 1985(3) clearly extended to private conspiracies. Expressing grave concern lest this holding be used to turn § 1985(3) into a "general federal tort law", id. at 102, 91 S.Ct. 1798, the Court, drawing mainly on legislative history, specified "invidiously discriminatory motivation", id, as a required element of a cause of action under § 1985(3), and further defined the requisite motivation in terms that have since become formulaic in § 1985(3) litigation: "The language regarding intent to deprive of equal protection, or equal privileges and immunities, means that there must be some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus behind the conspirators' action." Id. (Emphasis in original.)

Tracking the words of the statute, the court outlined the necessary components of a cause of action under § 1985(3): "To come within the legislation a complaint must allege that the defendants did (1) `conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another'; (2) `for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the law.'" Further, the complaint must allege that "one or more of the conspirators (3) did, or caused to be done, `any act in furtherance of the object of the conspiracy,' whereby another was (4a) `injured in his person or property' or (4b) `deprived of having and exercising any right or privilege of a citizen of...

To continue reading

Request your trial
15 cases
  • Bell v. City of Milwaukee, s. 82-2102
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit
    • September 4, 1984
    ...tactics to conceal evidence" regarding an unlawful raid); Stone v. City of Chicago, 738 F.2d 896 (7th Cir.1984); Britt v. Suckle, 453 F.Supp. 987 (E.D.Tex.1978). Though Dolphus Bell filed a wrongful death claim in state court soon after the killing, the cover-up and resistance of the invest......
  • Begay v. Kerr-McGee Corp.
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit
    • June 11, 1982
    ...to the statute, the injured employee may recover only the administrative remedies provided therein. See, e.g., Britt v. Suckle, 453 F.Supp. 987, 993-94 (E.D.Tex.1978) (applying Texas law). Arizona provides for election by the employee: an employee retains his right to sue the employer in to......
  • Sims v. Unified Government of Wyandotte County
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Kansas
    • August 14, 2000
    ...County of Chesterfield, 807 F.Supp. 1221, 1226-27 (E.D.Va.1992); Lewis v. Green, 629 F.Supp. 546, 550 (D.D.C.1986); Britt v. Suckle, 453 F.Supp. 987, 992 n. 8 (E.D.Tex.1978). Quite simply, subsection (2) does not apply to administrative proceedings. See Roper, 807 F.Supp. at 1227. For this ......
  • Holman v. Hilton
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey
    • July 9, 1982
    ...in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.8 There are cases which generally support his contention. E.g., Britt v. Suckle, 453 F.Supp. 987, 1002 (E.D.Tex.1978); Thompson v. Bond, 421 F.Supp. 878 (W.D.Mo.1976); Boling v. National Zinc Co., 435 F.Supp. 18 (N.D.Okl. 1976). Because th......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT