Harvey Aluminum (Incorporated) v. NLRB

• Decision Date: 05 August 1964
• Docket Number: No. 18273.,18273.
• Citation: 335 F.2d 749
• Parties: HARVEY ALUMINUM (INCORPORATED), General Engineering, Inc., and Wallace A. Ummel, d/b/a Wallace Detective and Security Agency, Petitioners, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

335 F.2d 749 (1964)

HARVEY ALUMINUM (INCORPORATED), General Engineering, Inc., and Wallace A. Ummel, d/b/a Wallace Detective and Security Agency, Petitioners, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.

No. 18273.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

August 5, 1964.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Sam F. Speerstra, William B. Wyllie, Rhoten, Rhoten & Speerstra, Salem, Or., for petitioner General Engineering, Inc.

William F. Lubersky, James H. Clarke, Koerner, Young, McColloch & Dezendorf, Portland, Or., Maxwell H. Elliott, Torrance, Cal., for petitioner Harvey Aluminum (Inc.).

John W. Hill, King, Miller, Anderson, Nash & Yerke, Portland, Or., for petitioner Wallace A. Ummel.

Arnold Ordman, Gen. Counsel, Dominick L. Manoli, Associate Gen. Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Solomon I. Hirsh and Seymour Strongin, Attys., N. L. R. B., Washington, D. C., for respondent.

Before HAMLIN, BROWNING, and DUNIWAY, Circuit Judges.

BROWNING, Circuit Judge.

The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint charging that petitioners engaged in an unfair labor practice¹ by maintaining surveillance of union activities of employees of Harvey Aluminum and General Engineering, Inc., through undercover operatives of the Wallace Detective and Security Agency. Petitioners admitted the surveillance, but insisted that its only object was to detect and prevent pilferage of company property.

Evidence relating to the central issue thus created was in direct and irreconcilable conflict. Two government witnesses (a former Wallace salesman and his wife) testified that Wallace was employed to investigate pro-union employees; managerial employees of Harvey and Wallace testified to the contrary. Three Wallace agents — Davis, Hahn, and Moore — testified that they were instructed to and did conduct union espionage at Harvey plants; seven other Wallace operatives testified that they were employed solely to secure information on pilferage, and denied specific acts of union spying attributed to them by the three government witnesses. The sole question presented by the record was which witnesses to believe. The Board decided that the testimony of the government's witnesses was to be credited, and that of the petitioners' was not; the order under review rested ultimately upon this determination.

I.

The only direct evidence that Wallace agents spied upon the union activities of employees of Harvey and General was testimony to that effect by witnesses Davis, Hahn, and Moore. Petitioners launched a major assault upon the credibility of this testimony.²

In the course of cross-examination, all three of these witnesses testified that they had given statements to the Board and to the Labor Department relating to the nature and purpose of their employment at plants of Harvey and General. Davis also testified that he had given such a statement to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Petitioners sought to obtain these documents for use in cross-examination. They contend that they were improperly denied access to statements in the possession of the Labor Department and FBI, and that errors were committed in dealing with their requests for production of statements in the Board's possession.

A.

When it was disclosed on cross-examination that the witnesses had given statements relating to their testimony to the Labor Department and to the FBI, petitioners moved for their production; the motions were denied. Petitioners secured the issuance of subpoenas duces tecum calling for the statements, addressed to the Secretary of Labor and the Attorney General; the subpoenas were later revoked. Petitioners requested the Board to ask the Secretary of Labor and the Attorney General to make the statements available pursuant to 29 U.S.C.A. § 161(6);³ the request was refused.

Prior to the present proceeding, the Board recognized, under the compulsion of NLRB v. Adhesive Prods. Corp., 258 F.2d 403 (2d Cir. 1958),⁴ that the principle announced in Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657, 77 S.Ct. 1007, 1 L.Ed.2d 1103 (1957), is applicable to adjudicatory, adversary hearings before the Board.⁵ Accordingly, the Board modified section 102.118 of its regulations,⁶ which prohibited disclosure of documents in its files except upon written consent of the Board or its General Counsel, by adding the following proviso:

"Provided, After a witness called by the general counsel has testified in a hearing upon a complaint under section 10(c) of the act, the respondent may move for the production of any statement of such witness in possession of the general counsel, if such statement has been reduced to writing and signed or otherwise approved or adopted by the witness. Such motion shall be granted by the trial examiner. If the general counsel declines to furnish the statement, the testimony of the witness shall be stricken." (Emphasis added.)

As construed by the Board, section 102.118 permits production only of statements in the Board's possession.⁷ The Board argues that this limitation is valid because Jencks announced a rule of evidentiary procedure for federal district courts, which is binding upon the Board under its Act only "so far as practicable" (29 U.S.C.A. § 160(b)). The Board contends that in adopting section 102.118 it went as "far as practicable," since the Board could not compel other federal agencies to produce documents from their files.

Prior statements of a witness relating to his testimony must be produced by the government because "justice requires no less." Jencks v. United States, supra, 353 U.S. at 669, 77 S.Ct. 1007, 1 L.Ed.2d 1103. The rule applies to proceedings of the Board because "`the laws under which these agencies operate prescribe the fundamentals of fair play.' Their proceedings must `satisfy the pertinent demands of due process.'" Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Bd., 102 U.S.App.D.C. 395, 254 F.2d 314, 327 (1958).⁸ Whether the compulsion of the rule is constitutional or statutory,⁹ the Board may not avoid it by adopting regulations inconsistent with its requirements.¹⁰ We think an agency regulation does not meet those requirements if, as applied, it limits the availability of prior statements to those which are in the possession of the particular federal agency conducting the hearing.

Neither the language nor the rationale of the Jencks opinion or the Jencks Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 3500) permits such a limitation. The Court stated that defendants are entitled to an order directing "the government" to produce statements otherwise within the rule which are in "its possession" (353 U.S. at 668, 77 S.Ct. at 1013, 1 L.Ed.2d 1103); the statute requires the production of statements "in the possession of the United States." The rationale of the rule — when the government relies upon a witness's testimony in support of the government's claim, it cannot in simple justice deny access to prior statements of the witness which may impeach that testimony — applies with equal vigor whether the statements are in the possession of the agency conducting the hearing or of another agency of the government. Obviously, "the value for impeaching purposes of statements of the witness recording the events before time dulls treacherous memory * * *" (353 U.S. at 667, 77 S.Ct. at 1013, 1 L.Ed. 2d 1103) is the same; and it would be equally unconscionable in either case to deny their use to the person adversely affected by the witness's testimony. The Board, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Labor are all parts of the government of the United States. The proceedings which the Board initiated against petitioners were public proceedings, undertaken on behalf of that government to enforce a public Act.¹¹

In a criminal prosecution the Department of Justice would scarcely be heard to say that it was not required to produce statements otherwise within the rule simply because the documents rested in the hands of another federal agency,¹² and we perceive no valid distinction, for this purpose, between that case and this one. The Board relies upon Commonwealth v. Smith, 412 Pa. 1, 192 A.2d 671 (1963), and People v. Parham, 60 Cal.2d 378, 33 Cal.Rptr. 497, 384 P.2d 1001 (1963), but that reliance is misplaced: the United States is a sovereignty separate from the States, and beyond their power to command; but the Departments of Justice and Labor are not sovereign, and though the Board may not be able to compel them to produce documents in their possession, the President¹³ or, if need be, the courts,¹⁴ may do so.

The Board argues that the practical result of such a rule is that "the Board must get the statements or lose the witnesses," and this "would leave the trial of Board cases at the mercy of the fortuitous coincidence of investigations conducted by this and other agencies — each concerned only with the administration of its laws." This may well be true. An agency other than the Board, viewing the matter from its different vantage point, may conclude that the Board's interest in having the testimony of the witness is not as great as the agency's interest in maintaining the privacy of its files.¹⁵ If the view of the agency in possession of the witness's prior statement prevails, the Board's efforts to enforce its Act may be hampered. This would no doubt be unfortunate. But it would be less defensible still to resolve such agency disputes by permitting the Board to have the benefit of the testimony while denying the opposing party access to statements of the witness in possession of the government by which the testimony might be impeached.

The Board suggests that the "housekeeping" regulations of the Departments of Justice¹⁶ and Labor¹⁷ afford an alternate ground for nonproduction. But such regulations are ordinarily construed as requiring only that the demand for production of agency documents be made upon the head of the agency rather than a subordinate employee,¹⁸ and the subpoenas which petitio...