Long v. Baltimore & O. R. Co.

• Decision Date: 20 April 1928
• Docket Number: 16.
• Citation: 141 A. 504,155 Md. 265
• Parties: LONG ET AL. v. BALTIMORE & O. R. CO. ET AL.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

141 A. 504

155 Md. 265

LONG ET AL. v. BALTIMORE & O. R. CO. ET AL.

No. 16.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

April 20, 1928

Appeal from Circuit Court, Frederick County; Hammond Urner, and Glenn H. Worthington, Judges.

"To be officially reported."

Suit by Ralph E. Long and another against the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company and another. Decree for defendants, and plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

Argued before BOND, C.J., and PATTISON, ADKINS, OFFUTT, DIGGES PARKE, and SLOAN, JJ.

Alban M. Wood and Milton G. Urner, Jr., both of Frederick, for appellants.

Parsons Newman, of Frederick, and Arthur L. Jackson, of Baltimore (J A. C. Bond, of Westminster, and Oscar J. Horn, of Cleveland Ohio, on the brief), for appellees.

PARKE J.

The appellants, Ralph E. Long and James S. Poteet, are railway engineers in the service of the appellee, the Baltimore & Ohio Railway Company, a corporation operating its extensive railway system, and members in good standing of the Grand International Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, an unincorporated association of more than seven members, the other appellee. The proceedings at bar were begun by the appellants against the appellees by a bill of complaint for an injunction to compel the appellees to recognize and enforce the alleged right of the appellant to employment by the railway company in a special form of railway work at a particular place by virtue of an agreement between the railway company and the brotherhood whereby territorial seniority of employees in point of service with the company was thus rewarded. The preliminary pleadings before the parties were at issue embraced a motion by the brotherhood to quash the writ of summons and return on the ground that the brotherhood was an unincorporated body with its permanent headquarters in Ohio, and so was not within section 104 of article 23 of the Code, since the proceedings were not an action affecting the common property rights and liabilities of the brotherhood; and, when this motion was lost, demurrers by each of the appellees to the original and two successively amended bills of complaint; and, after the demurrers to the second amended bill were overruled, answers on the part of both appellees. The principal substantive objections raised by the demurrers are: (1) That precedence or preference founded upon seniority of service are not such property rights in the workman as would justify a court of equity intervening by injunction to prevent any change in such precedence or preference by the party or parties creating them. Compare Burger v. McCarthy, 84 W.Va. 697, 100 S.E. 492; Hunt v. Dunlap (Tex. Civ. App.) 248 S.W 760; Chambers v. Davis, 128 Miss. 613, 91 So. 346, 22 A. L. R. 114; Gregg v. Starks, 188 Ky. 834, 224 S.W. 459. And (2) that the trade agreement between the railway company and the brotherhood is not a contract between individual members of the brotherhood and the company which will sustain the present proceedings by individual members. Compare West v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co., 103 W.Va. 417, 137 S.E. 654; Burnetta v. Coal Co., 180 Mo. 241, 79 S.W. 136; Hudson v. Cincinnati, etc., R. R. Co., 152 Ky. 711, 154 S.W. 47, 45 L. R. A. (N. S.) 184, Ann. Cas. 1915B, 98; Powers v. Journeymen Bricklayers' Union, 130 Tenn. 643, 172 S.W. 284, L. R. A. 1915E, 1006; Jennings v. Lee (D. C.) 395 F. 561; Connett v. United Hatters of North America, 76 N. J. Eq. 202, 74 A. 188; Piercy v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 198 Ky. 477, 248 S.W. 1042, 33 A. L. R. 322; 16 R. C. L. p. 425, § 10; 24 Cyc. 824.

These questions on the motion to quash and on the demurrers are important and debatable, but we shall pass them without an expression of opinion, since this is rendered unnecessary by our agreement with the judgment of the chancellor in dismissing the bill of complaint on the proof taken.

The brotherhood is a large and powerful labor union of men employed as locomotive engineers upon the different railways of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and through its constituted officials represent their members collectively and negotiate with the several railways of the United States and conclude agreements with them with respect to standards of wages and working conditions and rules and regulations governing the service of their members. Such a treaty had been concluded between the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company and the brotherhood in reference to the rates of pay and regulations governing engineers in road and yard service. By this contract the company was bound to give employment to its workmen in accordance with their preferential rights as determined from the rules of the brotherhood. The order in which work was given to railroad employees and in which precedence was accorded them in the assignment to particular jobs was decided by territorial seniority, which, generally speaking, was the relative position of a particular fireman or engineer with respect to his fellows in the same rank of employment and excellence of standing but of different length of service. To put it more concretely, the workman who was oldest in years of service as an engineer, other things being equal, should have the preference in the allotment of runs and other work in his yard or on his division. The matter in dispute here is whether or not the appellants have been wrongfully deprived of any preference which they enjoyed in the operation of the company's Brunswick Yards in Frederick county. The answer to this question depends mainly upon the validity of an agreement or resolution of January 25, 1908, which is known as the "fifty-fifty agreement." In order to comprehend this document and the circumstances of its adoption, it will be necessary to outline the history of the controversy.

In the first place, the unit of the brotherhood organization is the lodge, which it calls a "division." These subordinate lodges or divisions are organized at different points along the various railway systems, and every one of these divisions has territorial jurisdiction over a certain section or portion of the particular railway on which its members are employed, and the seniority rights of the members of every such division are effective or valid only on that portion of the railway on which the members of that division are employed. At this point it should be stated that the term "division" has a threefold use on this record. In railway use it means those territorial sections or geographical units into which a railway system is divided for operative purposes; while in brotherhood terminology its meaning is either a subordinate lodge or, for the purpose of ascertaining precedence through seniority, a particular area or district of the railway. It frequently occurs that a division will be a coterminous in both railway and union usage, as is illustrated on this record. Before May 10, 1891 the Baltimore or First Division for railway purposes extended from Baltimore to Martinsburg, W. Va., and Division No. 97 of the Brotherhood had the twofold significance of the lodge established at Baltimore and the section of railway territory along the company's railroad west to Martinsburg. Likewise, the company's Cumberland or Second Division began at the western terminus of the First Division in Martinsburg and extended westward; and Division No. 506 of the brotherhood meant the local lodge at Brunswick, and that section of railway territory west of Martinsburg, which was the dividing point between Divisions 1 and 2 of the company and Divisions No. 97 and 506 of the brotherhood. So for both railway operation and seniority purposes there was no territorial difference before May 10, 1891, but on that date the company opened its Brunswick Yard, which then embraced only what is now known as the east yard at Brunswick, and, at the same time, both the company and the brotherhood respectively reduced the territorial extent of the Baltimore Division and Division No. 97 by about 35 miles by making their western terminus at the west end of what is now called the "east yard" at Brunswick; and, correspondingly, increased the track mileage of the Cumberland Division and Division No. 506 by making it include the railway territory between the west end of the "east yard" at Brunswick to Martinsburg. To compensate for this loss of trackage, a number of engineers of Division No. 97 were transferred to Division No. 506, in both senses of lodge membership and seniority rights, in order that the proportion of engineers allotted by track mileage should approximately remain the same. The dividing line between the divisions at Brunswick was at a point near Maple avenue, and from 1906 to 1908 the company built a westward extension of its yard at Brunswick. This addition was as large or larger than the original, and is called the west end yard and was built entirely within the Cumberland Division and Division No. 506. About 1908 the company for operating purposes again changed the western terminus of the Baltimore Division from the point near Maple avenue in Brunswick to a point at or near Weverton Station, but the brotherhood made no change, so that the engineers of the Cumberland Division still enjoyed their rights of territorial seniority to the western end of the old or east yard. The yard was a unit for railroad operations, and the company began to operate both the old and new parts as one. Since the seniority rights of the yard engineers were respectively limited to the territory within their respective divisions, the result was that the portion of the Brunswick yard west of Maple avenue was subject to the territorial seniority rights of the engineers of Division No. 506 (Cumberland), and that section of the yard east of Maple avenue was governed by the territorial seniority rights of engineers of Division No. 97 (Baltimor...