Hotel & Restaurant Emp. & Bartenders Union Local No. 339 v. Creighton's Restaurant Corp.

• Decision Date: 07 October 1959
• Docket Number: No. 1152,1152
• Citation: 115 So.2d 30
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals
• Parties: 45 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2225, 38 Lab.Cas. P 65,830 HOTEL & RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES & BARTENDERS UNION LOCAL NO. 339 et al., Appellants, v. CREIGHTON'S RESTAURANT CORPORATION et al., Appellees.

Page 30

115 So.2d 30

45 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2225, 38 Lab.Cas. P 65,830

HOTEL & RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES & BARTENDERS UNION LOCAL NO. 339 et al., Appellants, v. CREIGHTON'S RESTAURANT CORPORATION et al., Appellees.

No. 1152.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

Oct. 7, 1959.

Joseph A. Varon, Hollywood, for appellants.

Carl A. Hiaasen, of McCune, Hiaasen, Kelley & Crum, Fort Lauderdale, for appellees.

SHANNON, Judge.

This is an interlocutory appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court for Broward County, Florida, granting a temporary injunction to the appellees and against the appellants. The appellees, as plaintiffs below, filed their sworn complaint alleging that Creighton's Restaurant has been operated, equipped and furnished as one of the most superb, magnificent, elegant and excellent restaurants in the whole country, catering to a select clientele of critical and fastidious tastes; that its restaurant and its auxiliary gift shop have been treated and considered as one of the show places of south Florida; that the corporation has not directly or indirectly engaged in interstate commerce; that it is and has been exclusively a local business enterprise soliciting and catering to patrons in Broward County, Florida, and not elsewhere; that its employees were specially trained to carry on the business and that the said employees had not been organized by any labor union and had not had any labor disputes of whatever kind with the plaintiff. Also they alleged that at all times the said employees have been free to join any labor union they desired and have been free to organize their own labor union if they so desired, and that neither the restaurant nor its officers or agents had exercised any coercion, persuasion or direction relating to the labor organization. They further alleged that on February 9, 1959, at about six o'clock P.M. the plaintiff restaurant discharged a waitress for the reason that she was not fulfilling her duties and rendering to patrons the kind of service required; that at eight o'clock P.M. February 9, at the height of the dinner hour, approximately forty employees of the restaurant, without notice to the plaintiffs, quit their work, leaving the patrons unserved. It further alleged that the said employees who had walked off their jobs were requested to return to their work and finish serving the patrons, but the employees refused to return to work. Thereupon Creighton's Restaurant advised said employees that it regarded their failure to return to work as their termination of their employment. They further alleged that the next morning, February 10, 1959, the president of the plaintiff corporations had a telephone conversation with the defendant Paul P. McCastland, and was informed by him that the action of said employees was without justification; and that by Tuesday night, February 10, 1959, the plaintiff had been able to organize the staff of employees so that it could operate its business as usual. The complaint charged the defendants with intercepting motor vehicles carrying the employees of Creighton's Restaurant to their work, and by intimidation and coercion seeking to persuade them to quit their employment with plaintiffs; with organizing a picket line in front of Creighton's Restaurant, and with the use of threats, intimidation and coercion seeking to dissuade customers from patronizing Creighton's Restaurant; with using the private property of the plaintiffs for their picket line, and intercepting trucks transporting food supplies to Creighton's Restaurant; and by the use of coercion, threats and intimidation seeking to dissuade the drivers of said trucks from delivering to the restaurant the necessary supplies for operation. The complaint goes on to state that said walkout or strike by the employees was not authorized by a majority vote of the employees but was done at the direction of the defendants without the existence of any labor dispute between the restaurant and its employees; that the defendants, their agents, representatives, servants and employees had deliberately and intentionally interfered with the progress and operation of the restaurant through the height of the winter season for the sole and express purpose of coercing and intimidating the employees of the said restaurant to join the defendants' union against the will of said employees; that such actions were being done in a manner so as to communicate to the patrons and the present employees of the restaurant a threat of force and violence; and that by so doing they were preventing ingress and egress by patrons and employees to and from the restaurant. The complaint, as far as we are here concerned, ended with a prayer for a temporary restraining order.

The chancellor on the 13th day of February, 1959, entered a temporary restraining order after considering the sworn complaint, the record of proceedings, the evidence submitted, and argument of counsel. The order restrained and enjoined the defendants:

'(a) From persuading or inducing the employees of Creighton's Restaurant to strike or walk out, or otherwise quit in concert their work at Creighton's Restaurant.

'(b) From picketing Creighton's Restaurant, owned and operated by Creighton's Restaurant Corporation.

'(c) From entering upon any portion of Tract A, shown on the plat of Sunrise, recorded in Plat Book 28, page 42, of the public records of Broward County, Florida.

'(d) From interfering with the right of ingress and egress to and from Creighton's Restaurant by its patrons, employees and delivery vehicles of service agencies.

'(e) From interfering in any way with the operation of Creighton's Restuarant by Creighton's Restaurant Corporation.'

The appellants have predicated their appeal upon two questions of law; namely, (1) whether the Circuit Court has jurisdiction to enjoin picketing by defendant union when no violence is involved, and (2) whether the temporary injunction is violative of the rights of the defendant union and its agents as being indefinite, uncertain and broader than necessary under the existing law of Florida.

The defendants, under the first point, cite the case of Hotel Employees Union, Local No. 255 v. Sax Enterprises, Inc., 358 U.S. 270, 79 S.Ct. 273, 3 L.Ed.2d 289, decided January 12, 1959, wherein the Supreme Court reversed the Supreme Court of Florida in twelve consolidated cases. In the language of the court:

'The judgments of the Supreme Court of Florida in these twelve consolidated cases must be reversed. They all concern the power of the courts of Florida to enjoin organizational picketing at twelve Florida resort hotels. After a series of decisions in regard to these and related cases, the Florida Supreme Court, in identical per curiam opinions, affirmed the issuance of permanent injunctions against the picketing.

'The Florida courts were without jurisdiction to enjoin this organizational picketing, whether it was activity protected by § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, 29 U.S.C.A. § 157, * * *.'

The Sax Enterprise case, supra, as we see it, is no authority for the question presented. In that case there were two phases upon which the United States Supreme Court bottomed its decision; namely, (1) the Florida Court was without jurisdiction, since these cases involved interstate commerce, and (2) there was no showing of violence. This can be readily seen from the following quotation:

'* * * In none of the twelve cases did the Florida trial courts make any finding of violence, and in some an affirmative finding of no violence was made.

'Since it was stipulated below that a witness would testify that interstate commerce was involved in the Florida resort hotel industry, and since the parties asked that 'final decree be entered by the Chancellor upon the record as now made in the light of this stipulation,' we find it unnecessary to remand for consideration of that question. * * *.'

Plaintiffs have cited many decisions, among which is Pappas v. Stacey, 151 Me. 36, 116 A.2d 497, appeal dismissed 350 U.S. 870, 76 S.Ct. 117, 100 L.Ed. 770, which involved a restaurant, as we have in the instant case. In a later appeal from the Wisconsin Court, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 695, A. F. L. v. Vogt, 354 U.S. 284, 77 S.Ct. 116, 1171, 1 L.Ed.2d 1347, affirmed 270 Wis. 315, 321, 71 N.W.2d 359, 74 N.W.2d 749, the Supreme Court had this to say about the Stacey case, supra.

'In the light of this background, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1955 decided, on an agreed statement of facts, the case of Pappas v. Stacey, 151 Me. 36, 42, 116 A.2d 497, 500. From the statement, it appeared that three union employees went on strike and picketed a restaurant peacefully 'for the sole purpose of seeking to organize other employees of the Plaintiff, ultimately to have the Plaintiff enter into collective bargaining and negotiations with the Union * * *' Maine had a statute providing that workers should have full liberty of self-organization, free from restraint by employers or other persons. * * * The Maine Supreme Judicial Court drew the inference from the agreed statement of facts that 'there is a steady and exacting pressure upon the employer to interfere with the free choice of the employees in the matter of organization. To say that the picketing is not designed to bring about such action is to forget an obvious purpose of the picketing--to cause economic loss to the business during...