Hunt v. Crumboch

• Decision Date: 18 June 1945
• Docket Number: No. 570,570
• Parties: HUNT et al. v. CRUMBOCH et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

325 U.S. 821

65 S.Ct. 1545

89 L.Ed. 1954

HUNT et al.

v CRUMBOCH et al.

No. 570.

Argued March 2, 1945.

Decided June 18, 1945.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 8, 1945.

See 66 S.Ct. 10.

Messrs. Peter P. Zion and Hirsh W. Stalberg, both of Philadelphia, Pa., for petitioners.

Mr. William A. Gray, of Philadelphia, Pa., for respondents.

Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question here is whether an organization of laboring men violated the Sherman Act, as amended, 26 Stat. 209, 38 Stat. 730, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1—7, 15, by refusing to admit to membership petitioner's employees, and by refusing to sell their services to petitioner, thereby making it impossible for petitioner profitably to continue in business.

For about fourteen years prior to 1939, the petitioner, a business partnership engaged in motor trucking, carried freight under a contract with the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. (A & P). Eighty-five percent of the merchandise thus hauled by petitioner was interstate, from and to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The respondent union, composed of drivers and helpers, was affiliated with other A.F. of L. unions whose members worked at loading and hauling of freight by motor truck. In 1937, the respondent union called a strike of the truckers and haulers of A & P in Philadelphia for the purpose of enforcing a closed shop. The petitioner, refusing to unionize its business, attempted to operate during the strike. Much violence occurred. One of the union men was killed near union headquarters, and a member of the petitioner partnership was tried for the homicide and acquitted. A & P and the union entered into a closed shop agreement, whereupon all contract haulers working for A & P, including the petitioner, were notified that their employees must join and become members of the union. All of the other contractor haulers except petitioner either joined the union or made closed shop agreements with it. The union, however, refused to negotiate with the petitioner, and declined to admit any of is employees to membership. Although petitioner's services had been satisfactory, A & P, at the union's instigation, cancelled its contract with petitioner in accordance with the obligations of its closed shop agreement with the union. Later, the petitioner obtained a contract with a different company, but again at the union's instigation, and upon the consummation of a closed shop contract by that company with the union, petitioner lost that contract and business. Because of the union's refusal to negotiate with the petitioner and to accept petitioner's employees as members, the petitioner was unable to obtain any further hauling contracts in Philadelphia. The elimination of the petitioner's service did not in any manner affect the interstate operations of A & P or other companies.

The petitioner then instituted this suit in a federal district court against respondents, the union and its representatives, praying for an injunction and asking for treble damages. Demurrers to the complaint were overruled, the case was tried, findings of fact were made, and the district court rendered a judgment for the respondents on the ground that petitioner had failed to prove a caus of action under the Anti-trust laws. Hunt v. Brotherhood of Transportation Workers, etc., D.C., 47 F.Supp. 571. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the fact that respondents' actions had caused petitioner to go out of business was not such a restraint of interstate commerce as would be actionable under the Sherman and Clayton Acts. 3 Cir., 143 F.2d 902. We granted certiorari because of the questions involved concerning the responsibility of labor unions under the Anti-trust laws.

The 'destruction' of petitioner's business resulted from the fact that the union members, acting in concert, refused to accept employment with the petitioner, and refused to admit to their association anyone who worked for petitioner. The petitioner's loss of business is therefore analogous to the case of a manufacturer selling goods in interstate commerce who fails in business because union members refuse to work for him. Had a group of petitioner's business competitors conspired and combined to suppress petitioner's business by refusing to sell goods and services to it, such a combination would have violated the Sherman Act. Binderup v. Pathe Exchange, 263 U.S. 291, 312, 44 S.Ct. 96, 100, 68 L.Ed. 308; Fashion Originators' Guild et al. v. Federal Trade Commission, 312 U.S. 457, 668, 61 S.Ct. 703, 85 L.Ed. 949. A labor union which aided and abetted such a group would have been equally guilty. Allen Bradley Co. et al. v. Local Union No. 3, I.B.E.W., 325 U.S. 797, 65 S.Ct. 1533. The only combination here, however, was one of workers alone and what they refused to sell petitioner was their labor.

It is not a violation of the Sherman Act for laborers in combination to refuse to work. They can sell or not sell their labor as they please, and upon such terms and conditions as they choose, without infringing the Anti-trust laws. Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U.S. 469, 502, 503, 60 S.Ct. 982, 997, 998, 84 L.Ed. 1311, 128 A.L.R. 1044. A worker is privileged under congressional enactments, acting either alone or in concert with his fellow workers, to associate or to decline to associate with other workers, to accept, refuse to accept, or to terminate a relationship of employment, and his labor is not to be treated as 'a commodity or article of commerce.' Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 730, 731, 15 U.S.C.A. § 17; Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U.S.C.A. § 101 et seq.; See also American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council, 257 U.S. 184, 209, 42 S.Ct. 72, 78, 66 L.Ed. 189, 27 A.L.R. 360. It was the exercise of these rights that created the situation which caused the petitioner to lose its hauling contracts and its business.

It is argued that their exercise falls within the condemnation of the Sherman Act, because the union members' refusal to accept employment was due to personal antagonism against the petitioner arising out of the killing of a union man. But Congress in the Sherman Act and the legislation which followed it manifested no purpose to make any kind of refusal to accept personal employment a violation of the Anti-trust laws. Such an application of those laws would be a complete departure from their spirit and purpose. Cf. Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, supra, 310 U.S. 512, 60 S.Ct. 1002, 84 L.Ed. 1311, 128 A.L.R. 1044; Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union No. 3, I.B.E.W., supra. Moreover 'So long as a union acts in its selfinterest and does not combine with nonlabor groups, the licit and the illicit under § 20 (29 U.S.C.A. § 52) are not to be distinguished by any judgment regarding the wisdom or unwisdom, the rightness or wrongness, the selfishness or unselfishness of the end of which the particular union activities are the means.' United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U.S. 219, 232, 61 S.Ct. 463, 466, 85 L.Ed. 788.¹

It is further argued that the concerted refusal of union members to work for petitioner must be held to violate the Sherman Act because petitioner's business was 'an instrumentality of interstate commerce.' See United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Ass'n, 166 U.S. 290, 312, 17 S.Ct. 540, 548, 41 L.Ed. 1007. Acceptance of this contention would imply that workers do not possess the same privileges to choose or reject employment with interstate carriers as with other businesses. The entire history of congressional legislation, including the Railway Labor Act, 48 Stat. 1185, 45 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., belies this argument.

Finally, it is faintly suggested that our decisions in Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U.S. 192, 65 S.Ct. 226; Tunstall v. Brother- hood, 323 U.S. 210, 65 S.Ct. 235, and Wallace Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 323 U.S. 248, 65 S.Ct. 238, require that we hold that respondents' conduct violated the Sherman Act. Those cases stand for the principle that a bargaining agent owes duty not to discriminate unfairly against any of the group it purports to represent. But if the record showed such discrimination against employees here, it would not even tend to show a violation of the Sherman Act. Congress has indicated no purpose to make a union's breach of duty to employees in a collective bargaining group, an infraction of the Sherman Act.

The controversy in the instant case, between a union and an employer, involves nothing more than a dispute over employment, and the withholding of labor services. It cannot therefore be said to violate the Sherman Act, as amended. That Act does not purport to afford remedies for all torts committed by or against persons engaged in interstate commerce. 'The maintenance in our federal system of a proper distribution between state and national governments of police authority and of remedies private and public for public wrongs is of far-reaching importance. An intention to disturb the balance is not lightly to be imputed to Congress.' Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U.S. 469, 513, 60 S.Ct. 982, 1002, 84 L.Ed. 1311, 128 A.L.R. 1044. Whether the respondents' conduct amounts to an actionable wrong subjecting them to liability for damages under Pennsylvania law is not our concern.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice ROBERTS.

I think the judgment should be reversed.

The issue presented in this case, in my judgment, lies wholly outside and beyond any precedent to be found in the decisions of this court, and certainly so as to Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U.S. 469, 60 S.Ct. 982, 84 L.Ed. 1311, 128 A.L.R. 1044, on which the court relies.

There was a labor dispute as to unionization between motor carriers and the union representing employes. The record demonstrates that the dispute involved in this case was no part of that labor dispute but an off-shoot of it; not involving wages, unionization, closed shop, hours or other conditions of work.

The union, in an effort to organize the employes of...