Granny Goose Foods, Inc v. Brotherhood of Teamsters Auto Truck Drivers Local No 70 of Alameda County 8212 1566

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: MARSHALL
• Citation: Granny Goose Foods, Inc v. Brotherhood of Teamsters Auto Truck Drivers Local No 70 of Alameda County 8212 1566, 415 U.S. 423, 94 S.Ct. 1113, 39 L.Ed.2d 435 (1974)
• Decision Date: 04 March 1974
• Docket Number: No. 72,72
• Parties: GRANNY GOOSE FOODS, INC., et al., Petitioners, v. BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS & AUTO TRUCK DRIVERS LOCAL NO. 70 OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, etc. —1566

415 U.S. 423

94 S.Ct. 1113

39 L.Ed.2d 435

GRANNY GOOSE FOODS, INC., et al., Petitioners,

v BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS & AUTO TRUCK DRIVERS LOCAL NO. 70 OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, etc.

No. 72—1566.

Argued Jan. 8, 1974.

Decided March 4, 1974.

Syllabus

Petitioner employers brought suit in California state court alleging that respondent Union was engaging in a strike in breach of collective-bargaining agreements. The court issued a temporary restraining order on May 18, 1970. Two days later the case was removed to federal court, and on June 4 the District Court denied the Union's motion to dissolve the restraining order. Strike activity then stopped and the labor dispute remained dormant until the Union, after the petitioners had refused to bargain, resumed its strike on November 30, 1970. Two days later the District Court, on petitioners' motion, held the Union in criminal contempt for violating the restraining order. The Court of Appeals reversed on the ground that the order had expired long before November 30, 1970, reasoning that under both state law and Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 65(b) the order expired no later than June 7, 1970, 20 days after its issuance, and rejecting petitioners' contention that the life of the order was indefinitely prolonged by 28 U.S.C. § 1450 'until dissolved or modified by the district court.' Held:

1. Whether state law or Rule 65(b) is controlling, the restraining order expired long before the date of the alleged contempt, since under the State Code of Civil Procedure a temporary restraining order is returnable no later than 15 days from its date, 20 days if good cause is shown, and must be dissolved unless the party obtaining it proceeds to submit its case for a preliminary injunction, and similarly, under Rule 65(b), such an order must expire by its own terms within 10 days after entry, 20 days if good cause is shown. Pp. 431—433 2. Section 1450 was not intended to give state court injunctions greater effect after removal to federal court than they would have had if the case had remained in state court, and it should be construed in a manner consistent with the time limitations of Rule 65(b). Pp. 443—440.

(a) Once a case has been removed to federal court, federal law, including the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, controls the future course of proceedings, notwithstanding state court orders issued prior to removal. The underlying purpose of § 1450 (to ensure that no lapse in a state court temporary restraining order will occur simply by removing the case to federal court) and the policies reflected in the time limitations of Rule 65(b) (stringent restrictions on the availability of ex parte restraining orders) can be accommodated by applying the rule that such a state court pre-removal order remains in force after removal no longer than it would have remained in effect under state law, but in no event longer than the Rule 65(b) time limitations, measured from the date of removal. Pp. 435—440.

(b) Accordingly, the order expired by its terms on May 30, 1970, under the 10-day limitation of Rule 65(b) applied from the date of removal; hence no order was in effect on November 30, 1970, and the Union violated no order when it resumed its strike at that time. P. 440.

3. The District Court's denial of the Union's motion to dissolve the restraining order did not effectively convert the order into a preliminary injunction of unlimited duration. Pp. 440 445.

(a) That the Union may have had the opportunity to be heard on the merits of the preliminary injunction when it moved to dissolve the restraining order is not the controlling factor, since under Rule 65(b) the burden was on petitioners to show that they were entitled to a preliminary injunction, not on the Union to show that they were not. Pp. 442—443.

(b) Where a court intends to supplant a temporary restraining order, which under Rule 65(b) expires by its own terms within 10 days of issuance, with a preliminary injunction of unlimited duration pending a final decision on the merits or further order of the court, it should issue an order clearly saying so, and where it has not done so, a party against whom a temporary restraining order has issued may reasonably assume that the order has expired within Rule 65(b)'s time limits. Here, since the only orders entered were a temporary restraining order and an order denying a motion to dissolve the temporary order, the Union had no reason to believe that a preliminary injunction of unlimited duration had been issued. Pp. 443—445.

472 F.2d 764, affirmed.

George J. Tichy, II, Spokane, Wash., for petitioners.

Duane B. Beeson, San Francisco, Col., for respondent.

Mr. Justice MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case concerns the interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 1450,¹ which provides in pertinent part: 'Whenever any action is removed from a State court to a district court of the United States . . . (a)ll injunctions, orders, and other proceedings had in such action prior to its removal shall remain in full force and effect until dissolved or modified by the district court.' The District Court held respondent Union in criminal contempt for violating a temporary restraining order issued by the California Superior Court on May 18, 1970, prior to the removal of the case from the Superior Court to the District Court. The Court of Appeals reversed, one judge dissenting, on the ground that the temporary restraining order had expired long before November 30, 1970, the date of the alleged contempt. 472 F.2d 764 (CA9 1973). The court reasoned that under both § 527 of the California Code of Civil Procedure and of Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 65(b), the temporary restraining order must have expired no later than June 7, 1970, 20 days after its issuance. The court rejected petitioners' contention that the life of the order was indefinitely prolonged by § 1450 'until dissolved or modified by the district court,' holding that the purpose of that statute 'is to prevent a break in the force of an injunction or a restraining order that could otherwise occur when jurisdiction is being shifted,' 472 F.2d at 767, not to 'create a special breed of temporary restraining orders that survive beyond the life span imposed by the state law from which they spring and beyond the life that the district court could have granted them had the orders initiated from the federal court.' Id., at 766.

As this understanding of the statute was in conflict with decisions of two other Circuits interpreting § 1450 to preclude the automatic termination of state court temporary restraining orders,² we granted certiorari, 414 U.S. 816, 94 S.Ct. 130, 38 L.Ed.2d 49 (1973). Finding ourselves in substantial agreement with the analysis of the Ninth Circuit in the present case, we affirm.

I

On May 15, 1970, petitioners Granny Goose Foods, Inc., and Sunshine Biscuits, Inc., filed a complaint in the Superior Court of California for the county of Alameda alleging that respondent, a local Teamsters Union, and its officers and agents, were engaging in strike activity in breach of national and local collective-bargaining agreements recently negotiated by multiunion-multiemployer bargaining teams. Although the exact nature of the underlying labor dispute is unclear, its basic contours are as follows: The Union was unwilling to comply with certain changes introduced in the new contracts; it believed it was not legally bound by the new agreements because it had not been a part of the multiunion bargaining units that negotiated the contracts;³ and it wanted to negotiate separate contracts with petitioner employers.

The same day the complaint was filed, the Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining all existing strike activity and ordering the defendants to show cause on May 26, 1970, why a preliminary injunction should not issue during the pendency of the suit. An amended complaint adding petitioner Standard Brands, Inc., was filed on May 18, and a modified temporary restraining order was issued that same day adding a prohibition against strike activities directed toward that employer.

On May 19, 1970, after having been served with the May 15 restraining order but before the scheduled hearing on the order to show cause, the Union and the individual defendants removed the proceeding to the District Court on the ground that the action arose under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1974, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C. § 185.⁴ On May 20, 1970 an amended removal petition was filed to take into account the modified temporary restraining order of May 18.

Simultaneously with the filing of the removal petition, the defendants filed a motion in the District Court to dissolve the temporary restraining order. The sole ground alleged in support of the motion was that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to maintain the restraining order under this Court's decision in Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson, 370 U.S. 195, 82 S.Ct. 1328, 8 L.Ed.2d 440 (1962), where the Court held that notwithstanding § 301's grant of jurisdiction to federal courts over suits between employers and unions for breach of collective-bargaining agreements, § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U.S.C. § 104, barred federal courts from issuing an injunction against a strike allegedly in violation of a collective-bargaining agreement containing a no-strike clause.

The employers then filed a motion to remand the case to the Superior Court, alleging that the defendants had waived their right to removal by submitting to the jurisdiction of the state court. The Union's motion to dissolve and the employers' motion to remand came on for a hearing on May 27, 1970. The motion to remand was denied from the bench. With respect to the motion to dissolve, the employers brought to the attention of the District Court our grant of certiorari in Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks Union, 396 U.S. 1000, 90 S.Ct. 572, 24 L.Ed.2d 492 (1970), which was interpreted as an...