Flame Coal Company v. United Mine Workers of America

• Decision Date: 21 May 1962
• Docket Number: No. 14498.,14498.
• Citation: 303 F.2d 39
• Parties: FLAME COAL COMPANY et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

303 F.2d 39 (1962)

FLAME COAL COMPANY et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 14498.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

May 21, 1962.

M. E. Boiarsky, Charleston, W. Va., and Harrison Combs, Washington, D. C. (Lay & Knuckles, Grant F. Knuckles, Pineville, Ky., on the brief), for defendant-appellant.

James S. Greene, Jr., Harlan, Ky., and Logan E. Patterson, Pineville, Ky., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Before MILLER, Chief Judge, and CECIL and O'SULLIVAN, Circuit Judges.

O'SULLIVAN, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from plaintiffs' judgment in an action against United Mine Workers of America for damages under Section 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (29 U.S.C.A. § 187) for secondary boycott and for the common law tort of wrongful interference with business. Upon a jury's verdict, judgment was entered for plaintiffs in the amount of $104,845.00, of which $54,845.00 was for compensatory and $50,000.00 for punitive damages.

Plaintiffs, Flame Coal Company, Co-Dee Coal Company and Amanda Coal Company, are Kentucky Corporations, referred to herein as Flame, Co-Dee and Amanda. At the time of the alleged wrongs, Co-Dee and Amanda were engaged in the auger mining of coal in Eastern Kentucky. The coal mined by them was sold to Flame, and transported by independent truckers to the premises of Flame where it was processed and loaded into railroad cars for shipment to Flame's customers. Flame, Co-Dee and Amanda are controlled by one person, Mrs. Virginia C. Collins, who is the principal stockholder of each, but each had one or more stockholders not common to the others.

Plaintiffs were among one hundred and seventy-six (176) coal companies in the southeastern Kentucky-northeastern Tennessee region which had not signed the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1950, as amended in 1958. In the spring of 1959, starting about March 17, the defendant, United Mine Workers of America, carried on a campaign to obtain agreements with unsigned companies, including plaintiff Flame. The campaign was conceived and prosecuted on a grand scale. Spectacular and varied methods were employed. Mass picketing at the tipple sites, on the highways, on railroad sidings, and at the mines was carried on. Pickets, sometimes numbering in excess of a thousand men, roamed throughout the area in motor convoys. The persuasion of sheer numbers was supplemented by more violent and forceful methods. Trucks were stopped at tipples, and on the way to and from them; their loads were dumped on, and off of, the highway. Mine and tipple workers were beaten. Strong threats of violence were made to the independent truck drivers to persuade them to discontinue transporting coal from the mines to the tipples. After April 30, 1959, when mass picketing was substantially discontinued because of a federal court injunction (there was evidence by defendant that the picketing convoys were stopped because troublesome strangers were joining them) the pattern of coercion took a different and still more violent turn. Railroad tracks and bridges were dynamited, as were tipples, trucks and other equipment. In fulfillment of a prophetic warning to truckers and others that "when the leaves come out on the trees" more convincing methods would be employed, the Flame tipple was put under gunfire from the nearby hills almost daily. There was evidence that guards at the tipple, on some occasions, returned the fire.

The web of persuasion extended over a wide area. Mass picketing at the Flame tipple prevented the processing of coal there. Mass picketing at a railroad switching point prevented the removal of coal from the tipple. Trucks and automobiles were struck by bullets and that, with other threats, violence and interference, persuaded truckers to give up hauling coal from the Co-Dee and Amanda mines to the Flame tipple. On eight different occasions, the raiload spur track leading to the tipple was dynamited.

Field representatives of defendant United Mine Workers directed and led the convoys of pickets and were present at or near the scene of much of the described violence. These field men were selected and appointed by the President of District 30 of the defendant United Mine Workers. The events here involved occurred within District 30. Specific identification of the riflemen in the hills, the dynamiters, and other individuals, perpetrators of violence and threats, was not made. Defendant's witnesses testified of instructions given to the members of the convoys to behave themselves and not violate the law. Our review of the record, however, satisfies us that there was admissible and competent evidence from which the jury could infer and find that defendant union was the author of, and responsible for, the violence and illegal conduct which effectively interrupted and interfered with the business of plaintiffs. The evidence was sufficient to support a verdict and judgment requiring defendant union to respond in damages for the acts of its members, agents and representatives. United Mine Workers of America v. Patton, 211 F.2d 742, 47 A.L.R.2d 850 (C.A. 4, 1954); United Mine Workers of America v. Meadow Creek Coal Co., 263 F.2d 52, 61 (C.A. 6, 1959) cert. denied 359 U.S. 1013, 79 S.Ct. 1149, 3 L.Ed.2d 1038.

Defendant's motions for directed verdict, for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and for a new trial were denied. On this appeal, it presents some fourteen statements of questions involved. We discuss such of them as we consider require it, as follows:

(1) Jurisdiction. Defendant denies the jurisdiction of the district court to entertain a case where a claim under Section 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (29 U.S.C.A. § 187) is joined with a non-federal common law action for tort.

This contention has been considered and disposed of, contrary to defendant's contention, in the cases of United Mine Workers of America v. Meadow Creek Coal Co., 263 F.2d 52 (C.A. 6, 1959), cert. denied 359 U.S. 1013, 79 S.Ct. 1149, 3 L. Ed.2d 1038; United Mine Workers of America v. Osborne Mining Company, 279 F.2d 716 (C.A. 6, 1960) cert. denied 364 U.S. 881, 81 S.Ct. 169, 5 L.Ed.2d 103; Gilchrist v. United Mine Workers of America, 290 F.2d 36 (C.A. 6, 1961), cert. denied 368 U.S. 875, 82 S.Ct. 120, 7 L.Ed.2d 76. In Meadow Creek, Judge Martin of this court quoted the district court's conclusion that, "the claim of secondary boycott and unlawful conspiracy are not separate causes of action, but are merely different grounds to support a single cause of action, the cause of action being the violation by the defendant of the plaintiff's right to be free from wrongful interference with its business." Citing Hurn v. Oursler, 289 U.S. 238, 53 S.Ct. 586, 77 L.Ed. 1148, he sustained the district court's retention of jurisdiction to dispose of the entire cause of action.

A different phase of defendant's attack upon the district court's jurisdiction is its argument that defendant, a voluntary unincorporated association, is not considered, in Kentucky, a jural entity subject to suit, and there being no diversity of citizenship between plaintiff and the officers and members of the union, jurisdiction in the federal court could not attach as to the common law action. However, federal jurisdiction attached here because of the secondary boycott and under Rule 17(b) F.R.Civ.P. 28 U.S. C.A. defendant, an unincorporated association, is suable as such and in the federal court may be made to respond in damages for its tortious conduct (29 U.S. C.A. § 187). Gilchrist v. United Mine Workers of America, supra (290 F.2d 39); United Mine Workers of America v. Osborne, supra (279 F.2d 716).

(2) Was there proof of a secondary boycott? Appellant argues that there was no evidence that the United Mine Workers encouraged employees of other employers to cease handling coal of the plaintiffs for a prohibited objective within the meaning of Section 303. Argument is made that defendant did not induce a concert of action by employees of any neutral employer; that the case did not present a situation involving primary and secondary employers. It is sufficient to say that the general objective of defendant was to require Flame to sign the union's contract. Co-Dee and Amanda were separate entities from Flame, as were the individual truckers and trucking companies. This union cannot escape the charge of secondary boycott because it chose to attack on all fronts at once, claiming its desire and objective to be the organization of all involved, whether producers, transporters or processors of coal. United Mine Workers of America v. Osborne Mining Co., 279 F.2d 716, 723.

(3) Admission of evidence of events occurring at other mines. The district court admitted evidence of violence occurring at the premises of operators other than plaintiffs. Such evidence disclosed the broad pattern of defendant's campaign, with violence sufficiently spectacular and in such proximity to plaintiffs' operation as to become known to secondary employers and their employees and to induce them to discontinue mining or hauling coal for Flame. By Judge Weick's opinion in Osborne (p. 725) we held such evidence admissible.

(4) Punitive damages. The defendant claims that punitive damages were not recoverable. Under facts so similar to what the evidence here disclosed as to provide appropriate precedent, we held that it was permissible to allow punitive damages. United Mine Workers of America v. Osborne Mining Company, supra; Gilchrist v. United Mine Workers, supra. We need not here add to what was said in those cases.

(5) Compensatory damages. Aside from Flame's cost of repairing dynamited railroad tracks and wages paid to extra guards employed to guard its tipple, plaintiffs' evidence of compensatory damages consisted of an estimate of profits that they claim were lost by Flame, Amanda and Co-Dee as a direct result of tortious conduct of the United Mine...