Buck Creek Coal, Inc. v. United Workers of America

• Citation: 917 F. Supp. 601
• Decision Date: 24 August 1995
• Docket Number: No. TH 94-0065-M/H.,TH 94-0065-M/H.
• Parties: BUCK CREEK COAL, INC., Plaintiff, v. UNITED WORKERS OF AMERICA, United Mine Workers of America, District 11, United Mine Workers of America, Local 4538, Roger T. Myers, William Yockey, Herb Priest, Steve Strahla, Harry Cowan, Loren Taylor, Joe Minks, and Rodney McGhee, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana

917 F. Supp. 601

BUCK CREEK COAL, INC., Plaintiff, v. UNITED WORKERS OF AMERICA, United Mine Workers of America, District 11, United Mine Workers of America, Local 4538, Roger T. Myers, William Yockey, Herb Priest, Steve Strahla, Harry Cowan, Loren Taylor, Joe Minks, and Rodney McGhee, Defendants.

No. TH 94-0065-M/H.

United States District Court, S.D. Indiana, Terre Haute Division.

August 24, 1995.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

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Patrick A. Shoulders, Ziemer Stayman Weitzel & Shoulders, Evansville, Indiana, for plaintiff.

John R. Mooney, Beins Axelrod Osborne Mooney & Greene, P.C., Sarah Starrett, International Union, United Mine Workers of America, Washington, DC, for defendants United Mine Workers of America, and Roger T. Myers.

Peggy A. Hillman, Indianapolis, Indiana, for all defendants.

ORDER ON MOTION TO DISMISS

McKINNEY, District Judge.

This cause pends before the Court on a motion to dismiss all counts of the Complaint filed by the defendants. The Complaint consists of three counts, one of which asserts a claim under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"). 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968. The remaining two counts are claims under state law. Jurisdiction of this Court depends on the federal RICO claim. See 28 U.S.C. § 1331. The state law claims fall under the Court's supplemental jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a). Should the RICO charges be found inadequate to state a claim for relief this Court may decline to exercise its supplemental jurisdiction and remand the state law issues to the state court for further proceedings. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c); United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1139, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966). Consequently, this opinion focuses on the federal RICO claim, without which the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the remaining claims.

As further explained below, the Court finds the defendants' motion to be well taken, and therefore GRANTS dismissal of the RICO count with prejudice, and REMANDS the state law claims to the Sullivan Circuit Court.

I. FACTUAL & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND¹

In April, 1993, Buck Creek Coal, Inc. ("Buck Creek"), an Indiana corporation that owns an underground coal mine in Sullivan County, Indiana, was the target of labor strife. The strife was encouraged, instigated and conducted by certain members of the United Mine Workers, District 11 ("District 11"), which includes United Mine Workers, Local 4538 and fourteen other local unions. The United Mine Workers of America, International ("UMWA"), is a labor organization composed of many regional districts, and the local unions within those districts. District 11 is a regional district within the UMWA.

Defendants William Yockey ("Yockey"), who is president of District 11, and Herb Priest ("Priest"), who is a district representative of District 11, are individuals capable of holding a legal or beneficial interest in property. See 18 U.S.C. § 1961(3) and § 1962(c). Defendants Steve Strahla, Harry Cowan, Loren Taylor, Rodney McGhee and Joe Minks are employees of Buck Creek or members of UMWA, and are also persons capable of holding an interest in property (together with Yockey and Priest, the "Persons"). Id.

District 11 is alleged to be an "enterprise" within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1961(4) and § 1962(c), the activities of which affect interstate commerce (the "Enterprise"). In April, 1993, the Persons engaged in, authorized, or ratified the following actions taken against Buck Creek and various other coal mines within District 11:

1. Communicating threats of physical violence, personal injury and injury to family members of employees, and threats of property damage to real and personal property of the Mines;²

2. Physically restraining or confining certain employees of the Mines against their will on the premises of the Mines, on private property and on public roads;

3. Engaging in mass demonstrations at the Mines and obstructing ingress and egress at the Mines;

4. Damaging and stealing real and personal property of the Mines, including trucks, transformers, conveyor belts and electronic equipment;

5. Preventing persons from traveling the public roads free from threats of, or actual, violence;

6. Using the telephone lines to communicate threatening and harassing messages to employees and agents of the Mines;

7. Failing to observe the terms and conditions of a court order and failing to ensure the observance by other UMWA members of the terms of said order;

8. Failing to adequately supervise and control UMWA members to prevent the activities described herein;

9. Failing to investigate complaints of threats, intimidation, harassment, violence and destruction of property by UMWA members; and

10. Interfering with the delivery of goods in interstate commerce by the use of threats of, or actual, physical violence to persons and property.

These actions were taken for the purpose of forcing others to cease doing business with the Mines, or to refuse to report for work at the Mines, to put others in fear of retaliation, and to force the Mines to agree to the demands of the Persons. Buck Creek claims it was injured in its business and its property by the conduct committed, authorized or ratified by the Persons.

UMWA, District 11 and the local unions, have the ability to control the activities of their individual agents. Yockey, Priest and Myers are individual agents of UMWA and District 11. All of the defendants knew or should have known about certain business relationships and prospective business relationships of Buck Creek's, all of which held a reasonable expectancy of future economic benefit to Buck Creek. Some of those relationships have ceased and some have become impossible to consummate since the events that began in April, 1993. Those relationships would have continued or would have been consummated had the enumerated acts not occurred. Buck Creek claims it has suffered economic harm as a result of the failure of these business relationships. The conduct at issue was undertaken by the defendants, both individually and in concert, with the express purpose of causing economic harm to Buck Creek.

This action was first filed in state court on May 17, 1993, but it was removed by defendants to this Court in June, 1993. At the same time the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the original complaint, which had alleged claims in three counts, a federal RICO claim, an Indiana RICO claim, and an Indiana tort claim for interference with business advantage. In the original Complaint, Buck Creek designated the collective group comprised of the United Mine Workers of America, its International, its District 11 and its Local 4538 as the "enterprise," and indicated the same group was the "persons" for RICO purposes.³ Consequently, Judge Brooks dismissed Count 1 of the original Complaint on March 15, 1994, in accordance with the teaching of New Beckley Mining v. UMWA, 18 F.3d 1161 (4th Cir.1994) (requiring RICO plaintiff to identify an enterprise that is separate from the "person"). The remaining claims were remanded to state court.

In the state court Buck Creek amended the Complaint to reconfigure the state and federal RICO claims, after which the defendants again removed the case to this Court in April, 1994. Defendants subsequently filed another motion to dismiss the entire Complaint, which is the one under consideration. The issues have been fully briefed and this matter is now ready for resolution.

II. STANDARDS

A. THE RICO PATTERN REQUIREMENT

In order for Defendants to be liable for a substantive civil RICO violation, their activities must include a "pattern of racketeering activity." See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(a)-(c), 1964(c).⁴ Racketeering activity is defined in the text of RICO as any one of a number of specified state and federal violations. See 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1). A pattern of racketeering activity "requires at least two acts of racketeering activity, one of which occurred after the effective date of RICO and the last of which occurred within ten years (excluding any period of imprisonment) after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity." 18 U.S.C. § 1961(5). In addition to the statutory requirement of at least two acts, the Supreme Court has held that a RICO pattern requires that the racketeering activities exhibit the factor of continuity plus relationship. H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 492 U.S. 229, 239, 109 S.Ct. 2893, 2900, 106 L.Ed.2d 195 (1989). If the alleged racketeering activities either are unrelated or do not exhibit continuity, there is no RICO pattern. See id. ("a plaintiff or prosecutor must show that the racketeering predicates are related, and that they amount to or pose the threat of continued criminal activity") (emphasis in original).

Racketeering activities are related if they "have the same or similar purposes, results, participants, victims, or methods of commission, or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated events." Id. at 240, 109 S.Ct. at 2901. The continuity requirement limits RICO actions to racketeering activities that "amount to or pose a threat of continued criminal activity." Id. at 239, 109 S.Ct. at 2900. Continuity is "centrally a temporal concept," which can be present in two forms: a closed-ended variant, in which the racketeering activities occur over a closed period that extends over a substantial period of time, or an open-ended variant, in which, although the racketeering activities have not actually occurred over a substantial period of time, "the conduct by its nature projects into the future with a threat of repetition." Id. at 241-42, 109 S.Ct. at 2902.

The Supreme Court has not established a clear-cut test or specific formula for determining whether a particular set of facts exhibits continuity. J.D. Marshall Int'l, Inc. v. Redstart, Inc., 935 F.2d 815, 820 (7th Cir.1992). Consequently, the Seventh Circuit employs a...