General Electric Company v. Callahan

• Decision Date: 24 August 1961
• Docket Number: No. 5775.,5775.
• Citation: 294 F.2d 60
• Parties: GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. John A. CALLAHAN, Commissioner of Labor and Industries of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

294 F.2d 60 (1961)

GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. John A. CALLAHAN, Commissioner of Labor and Industries of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 5775.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

August 24, 1961.

Lawrence S. Fordham, Boston, Mass., with whom Lewis H. Weinstein, Loyd M. Starrett, Boston, Mass., Roland C. Radice, Lynn, Mass., and Foley, Hoag & Eliot, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for appellant.

Joseph T. Doyle, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Edward J. McCormack, Jr., Atty. Gen., and Theodore R. Stanley, Legal Assistant to the Attorney General, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for appellees.

Before WOODBURY, Chief Judge, and HARTIGAN and ALDRICH, Circuit Judges.

WOODBURY, Chief Judge.

The appellant, General Electric Company, is a New York corporation engaged in the business of manufacturing a great variety of electrical machines and devices. There can be no doubt whatever that it is engaged in "commerce" as defined in § 2(6) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 29 U.S.C.A. § 152 (6) and is therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board. It has manufacturing plants in several Massachusetts communities, including Lynn, West Lynn and Medford, where it employs approximately 620 draftsmen, apprentices, designers, detailers and tracers. For years Local 142, American Federation of Technical Engineers, AFL-CIO, has been the Board certified representative of these employees for the purposes of collective bargaining.

On August 10, 1960, representatives of the appellant, G. E. hereinafter, and the Union commenced negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement to follow one due to expire on October 1, 1960. Negotiations dragging on unsuccessfully, the parties, on November 10, 1960, entered into a "Memorandum of Agreement Concerning Strike Truce" effective as of that date which re-established substantially all of the terms and conditions of the expired contract and terminated a strike of some six weeks duration.

By letter dated November 22, 1960, the Governor of Massachusetts requested the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration in the Department of Labor and Industries of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for brevity the State Board hereinafter, to "investigate and report upon the controversy" between the Union and G. E. in accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 150 § 3 quoted in material part in the margin.¹ This letter followed by six days a letter of November 16, 1960, from the attorneys for the Union asking the State Board to "make inquiry into the cause of the controversy" between G. E. and the Union, "to hear all persons interested in the controversy who may come before it" to "advise" the parties "what ought to be done or submitted to by either or both to adjust" the controversy and "make a written decision thereof; and in the performance of the foregoing functions to take such action as is required under G.L. Ch. 150, Sections 5 and 6" also quoted in material part in the margin.²

The State Board responded to these letters by scheduling a hearing for December 2, 1960, postponed at the appellant's request to December 13 and subsequently again postponed, for the purpose of investigating the controversy between G. E. and the Union and taking the action thereon required of it by statute. It gave notice thereof to the Union and G. E.

In the meantime, on December 9, Counsel for G. E. had filed a verified complaint in the court below against the Commissioner of Labor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the three members of the State Board, all of whom are naturally citizens of Massachusetts, asking for temporary and permanent injunctions against any action under the sections of the Massachusetts statute quoted above on the ground that the State Board was without jurisdiction for the reason that Congress had "pre-empted the field" of labor disputes in industries affecting "commerce" as defined in the federal legislation on the subject. Federal jurisdiction was alleged to rest upon diversity of citizenship and an adequate amount in controversy and it was also asserted that the action arose under Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States (the so-called Supremacy Clause), and the Fourteenth Amendment.³ Jurisdiction in equity was rested on the assertion that the plaintiff was threatened with irreparable injury and had no adequate remedy at law.

The plaintiff's application for a temporary injunction came on for hearing before the court below on December 12 at which time, without taking any evidence, the court gave an opinion from the bench concluding with the announcement: "The relief prayed for is denied," supplemented after colloquy with counsel for the appellant by the statement: "The Complaint is dismissed." Later on the same day the court below endorsed on the complaint: "Denied for lack of Equity Jurisdiction."

On the same day, December 12, the State Board issued summonses to representatives of G. E. directing them to appear before it on December 15 to give evidence of what they knew about the controversy. At that hearing counsel for G. E., appearing specially for the G. E. officials summoned to appear, petitioned the State Board to quash the summonses for lack of jurisdiction and supported their contention with a brief and oral argument. The State Board immediately denied the petition and G. E. on the same day appealed to this court from the action taken on December 12 by the court below.⁴ Subsequently counsel for G. E. again unsuccessfully argued the same jurisdictional point before the State Board. But before the State Board took any further action this court entered an order granting the appellant relief pending appeal.

The basis for the District Court's action is not altogether clear from its extemporaneous opinion. It seems to have rested its conclusion in part upon Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 1938, 303 U.S. 41, 58 S.Ct. 459, 82 L.Ed. 638, and in part upon the assertion that a court of equity "must not act to enjoin" an administrative agency "from conducting hearings and making findings, embarrassing as they may be, merely because such agency is acting without any warrant of law and contrary to the Constitution," which it immediately elaborated with the statement: "Those who engage in such conduct in a quasi-official or official capacity run such risk as there may be of private action against them if it be found that what they have done is tortious, and malicious, and undertaken with a full awareness that they are without power, and with the mere purpose of creating political or other embarrassment."

Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., supra, is not in point. The Court in that case held that the district courts lacked jurisdiction to enjoin the National Labor Relations Board from conducting hearings on charges of unfair labor practices for the reason that Congress had vested "exclusive" power to prevent unfair labor practices in the Board subject to judicial review only by the United States Courts of Appeals and on certiorari by the Supreme Court of the United States. The case is not in point on the question of adequate legal remedy, for no federal court has power to review actions of the State Board and it is established doctrine that the adequacy of relief available to G. E. at law is to be measured by the character of the relief which may be had in the federal courts. American Federation of Labor v. Watson, 1946, 327 U.S. 582, 594, 66 S.Ct. 761, 90 L.Ed. 873; Di Giovanni v. Camden Fire Insurance Ass'n, 1935, 296 U.S. 64, 69, 56 S.Ct. 1, 80 L.Ed. 47. And a suit in equity will lie where the remedy at law is not clear or as adequate and complete as that which equity can afford, Terrace v. Thompson, 1923, 263 U.S. 197, 214, 44 S.Ct. 15, 68 L.Ed. 255.

Nor is Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. authority for application of the rule of judicial abstention pending exhaustion of administrative remedies. The basic question for decision being one of federal law, as will be developed hereinafter, that is, a question of the interpretation of federal statutes and decisions, it is one that the State Board was not established and is not qualified to decide and can hardly be expected to entertain. Cf. Public Utilities Commission of State of California v. United States, 1958, 355 U.S. 534, 539, 540, 78 S.Ct. 446, 2 L.Ed.2d 470.

Neither do we see any merit in the suggestion that G. E. has an adequate remedy at law in a civil action sounding in tort, presumably in the federal courts, against members of the State Board. Such actions would lie at common law, as the court below indicated, only if G. E. could prove that the member or members of the State Board had not acted in good faith or maliciously or for some improper purpose. And in the absence of such conduct, G. E. probably would not have an action against the members of the State Board under Title 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983 even if it could be proved that State Board action had deprived it of some federally guaranteed right, privilege or immunity. Cf. Francis v. Lyman, 1 Cir., 1954, 216 F.2d 583, 586-588, and cases cited therein at page 587; Nelson v. Knox, 6 Cir., 1958, 256 F.2d 312; Hoffman v. Halden, 9 Cir., 1959, 268 F.2d 280, 298-300.

We are satisfied that G. E. has no adequate remedy at law. And for reasons which will presently appear, we are also satisfied that G. E., or perhaps the Union, since the State Board wields a two-edged sword, will suffer irreparable injury if the steps initiated by the State Board pursuant to its duties under Chapter 150 are allowed to proceed to completion.

We turn now to the appellee's challenge to the jurisdiction of this court on the ground that G. E.'s application for injunctive relief should have been submitted to and heard by a statutory three-judge court composed in accordance with Title 28 U.S.C. § 2284 from which appeals lie not to this court...