Construction and General Labor Union, Local No. 688 v. Stephenson

• Decision Date: 04 January 1950
• Docket Number: No. A-2322,A-2322
• Citation: 225 S.W.2d 958,148 Tex. 434
• Parties: CONSTRUCTION AND GENERAL LABOR UNION, LOCAL NO. 688, et al. v. STEPHENSON.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 958

225 S.W.2d 958

148 Tex. 434

CONSTRUCTION AND GENERAL LABOR UNION, LOCAL NO. 688, et al. v. STEPHENSON.

No. A-2322.

Supreme Court of Texas.

Jan. 4, 1950.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 1, 1950.

Mullinax, Wells & Ball, Dallas, L. N. D. Wells, Jr., Dallas, Charles J. Morris, Dallas, for petitioners.

E. Byron Singleton, Amarillo, Singleton, Smyth, Morris, Lockhardt & Edwards, Amarillo, Looney, Clark, & Moorhead, Austin, Everett L. Looney, Edward Clark, R. Dean Moorhead, Austin, for respondent.

HART, Justice.

The question before us is whether a permanent injunction against peaceful picketing can be sustained under Texas statutes when attacked on the ground that it deprives the petitioners of their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The picketing was directed against the respondent, H. I. Stephenson, who is engaged in the house-moving business. He uses special equipment and employs a crew of men who perform all of the tasks necessary to dismantling and removing a building from one place and transporting it to and setting it up at another location. None of the members of this crew belong to any union.

Stephenson contracted with Potter County to dismantle two hangars at Dalhart and to transport them to Amarillo and to reconstruct them there as one building. Before he began work on this contract, Stephenson was approached by union representatives who wished to have the members of his crew join unions. Stephenson stated that he had no objections to their joining unions, and agreed that the union representatives could talk to a meeting of his crew. They did so, and an election was held in which Stephenson's employees voted not to join any union. An effort was made by union representatives to have Stephenson employ union men in the work at Dalhart, but there was no interference by the union with Stephenson's work until the hangars had been removed to Amarillo and the work of reconstruction had started there. The union representatives then attempted to persuade Stephenson to substitute union men for his non-union regular crew in this work. Upon his refusal to do so, they picketed Stephenson's job, a single picket carrying a banner reading as follows:

'Amarillo Building and Construction Trades Council protest the employment by Ira Stephenson and Company of non-union labor on this job, and the failure of the employees on this job to join unions affiliated with the Amarillo Building and Construction Trades Council.'

Stephenson thereupon brought suit, alleging that the unions' purpose was to force him to hire only union men and to compel his crew to join two local unions, that no labor dispute existed as defined by Texas statutes, and that the picketing was in violation of Texas statutes, particularly referring to Article 5154f, Vernon's Ann.Civ.St., Acts 1947, 50th Leg., p. 779, ch. 387. He prayed for temporary and permanent injunctive relief against picketing. The unions and their business agents who were named as defendants answered that a bona fide labor dispute existed, that Stephenson had agreed to employ only union members on the re-erection job in Amarillo but had failed and refused to carry out this agreement and had employed non-union labor at wages below the union scale, that the unions and their members had a constitutional right to picket Stephenson's job, and that to the extent that Texas statutes prohibited the exercise of this right they were invalid.

The defendants waived a hearing on a temporary injunction and agreed that the court might proceed to a hearing on the merits. After a trial without a jury, the court rendered judgment in favor of Stephenson permanently enjoining the unions and their members from picketing the premises where Stephenson was performing his work, 'unless at such time controversy then exists between plaintiff and the majority of his employees concerning wages, hours or conditions of employment, or a controversy exists between plaintiff and the majority of his employes belonging to any one labor union concerning wages, hours or conditions of employment.' This judgment has been affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals. 221 S.W.2d 375.

No request was made of the trial court to make and file findings of fact and conclusions of law, under Rules 296-299, Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, and no separate findings and conclusions were filed. In the absence of findings of fact in a case tried without a jury, it is settled that we must test the validity of the judgment on the assumption that the trial court found every disputed fact in such a way as to support the judgment he rendered. Rolison v. Puckett, 145 Tex. 366, 198 S.W.2d 74; International Union of Operating Engineers v. Cox, Tex.Sup., 219 S.W.2d 787; North East Texas Motor Lines v. Dickson, Tex.Sup., 219 S.W.2d 795. Petitioners point out that the judgment in this case recites certain findings of fact and, after granting an injunction against picketing, provides that all other relief not specifically granted is denied. However, this denial of other relief does not constitute a finding of the nonexistence of facts not recited in the judgment; and in this situation omitted findings necessary to support the judgment will be supplied by a presumption in support of the judgment, if there is evidence in the record to sustain such omitted findings. Bednarz v. State, 142 Tex. 138, 176 SW.2d 562. Moreover, it is established that this court will not reverse a judgment of the trial court affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals if the judgment is correct in view of the entire record, even though in our opinion one or both of the lower courts have given erroneous reasons for rendering or upholding the judgment. Walker v. Garland, Tex.Com.App., 235 S.W. 1078; Bordelon v. Philbrick, 125 Tex. 460, 84 S.W.2d 710; Payne v. Bracken, 131 Tex. 394, 115 S.W.2d 903. This rule is not contrary to the holdings in Safety Casualty Co. v. Wright, 138 Tex. 492, 160 S.W.2d 238, and Kousal v. Texas Power & Light Co., 142 Tex. 451, 179 S.W.2d 283, to the effect that parties are restricted in the appellate court to the theory on which the case was tried in the lower court. In the present case, the case was tried in part on the theory on which we hold the judgment can be sustained, as is shown by the pleadings and the evidence in the record, and therefore the fact that the lower courts rested their judgments in part on what we hold to be erroneous legal reasons does not require a reversal of the judgment.

The ground on which the district court apparently based his judgment was that the picketing was unlawful because no labor dispute existed between Stephenson and any of his employees, and therefore the picketing in question was 'secondary picketing' as defined and prohibited by Article 5154f, Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. The Court of Civil Appeals sustained this reason for the judgment, and also placed its judgment in part on the basis that the purposes for which the unions picketed Stephenson were not lawful purposes or objectives. 221 S.W.2d at pages 380, 381. In spite of our settled policy not to decide constitutional questions where they can be avoided, we must determine whether Article 5154f can be validly applied to sustain the injunction in this case, because the injunction by its terms incorporates the provisions of Sec. 2, par. h of that statute, and the petitioners specifically attack this portion of the trial court's judgment.

We do not think that the injunction can be upheld on the ground that no 'labor dispute' existed because there was in fact no dispute between Stephenson and any of his employees. To the extent that Article 5154f restricts the meaning of a 'labor dispute' to a controversy between an employer and his employees and prohibits picketing except where such a controversy exists, we think that the statute is in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment as construed by the Supreme Court of the United States in American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U.S. 321, 61 S.Ct. 568, 85 L.Ed. 855, and Cafeteria Employees Union, Local 302 v. Angelos, 320 U.S. 293, 64 S.Ct. 126, 88 L.Ed. 58, and that the statute must yield. In the Swing case the Supreme Court held, and repeated in the Angelos case, that 'a state cannot exclude workingmen from peacefully exercising the right of free communication by drawing the circle of economic competition between employers and workers so small as to contain only an employer and those directly employed by him.' 312 U.S. at page 326, 61 S.Ct. 568, 570, 85 L.Ed. 855; 320 U.S. at page 296, 64 S.Ct. 126, 88 L.Ed. 58. The rule is thus stated unequivocally as a constitutional limitation on the exercise of power by a state in dealing with industrial disputes, and we must therefore hold that the admitted fact that none of Stephenson's employees had any quarrel with him will not justify the issuance of the injunction in this case.

The Court of Civil Appeals undertook to distinguish the Swing case, supra, citing Carpenters & Joiners Union of America, Local No. 213 v. Ritter's Cafe, 315 U.S. 722, 62 S.Ct. 807, 86 L.Ed. 1143, on the ground that there was no 'interdependence of economic interest' between the petitioners and Stephenson's employees, emphasizing the facts that house moving is a specialized business, that there was no house movers' union for Stephenson's employees to join, and that Stephenson's employees performed a variety of tasks, many of which were not performed by any members of the picketing unions. Conceding all of this to be true, still we think that the undisputed facts compel the conclusion that a relation existed between the work which Stephenson's employees were doing at the time of the picketing and the work which the union members were accustomed to perform which would give them a real and substantial economic interest in the work on Stephenson's job. The undisputed evidence shows that the work of erecting the steel trusses was work which members of the iron...