McDaniel v. Textile Workers Union of America (CIO)

• Decision Date: 11 August 1952
• Citation: 36 Tenn.App. 236,254 S.W.2d 1
• Parties: McDANIEL v. TEXTILE WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA (CIO) et al.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Appeals

Page 1

254 S.W.2d 1

36 Tenn.App. 236

McDANIEL v. TEXTILE WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA (CIO) et al.

Court of Appeals of Tennessee, Eastern Section.

Aug. 11, 1952.

Certiorari Denied by Supreme Court Dec. 6, 1952.

McCanless & Taylor and W. J. Barron, Morristown, for Victor mCdaniel.

Robert S. Cahoon, of Greensboro, N. C., and Crawford & Hurd, of Newport, for Textile Workers Union and others.

McAMIS, Judge.

The principal questions for our determination are: (1) Whether, as applied to a non-resident association, Chapter 32, Public Acts of 1947, providing for process on unincorporated associations, both resident and non-resident, infringes upon the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and (2) whether the Act violates Article 2, Section 17, of the Tennessee Constitution on the ground that it embraces more than one subject and the body of the Act is broader than its caption.

Victor McDaniel sued Ambrose Hash, John Paul Gregory, Textile Workers Union of America (CIO), and its Local No. 1054 in the Circuit Court of Hamblen County, Tennessee, for personal injuries sustained as a result of being shot as he entered the plant of his employer, Enka Corporation, in Hamblen County, Tennessee at about 6:30 A.M. on June 22, 1950. The declaration charges that the individual defendants in firing upon plaintiff were acting for defendants Textile Workers Union of America (CIO) and Local No. 1054 in maintaining a picket line around the Enka plant during a strike. Process issued and was served upon the individual defendants and upon the Secretary of State of the State of Tennessee to bring the Union and its Local before the Court as authorized by Chapter 32, Acts of 1947, here under assault.

The defendants, Ambrose Hash and John Paul Gregory, each filed a plea of the general issue. The defendants, Textile Workers Union of America (CIO) and Local 1054, each filed a plea in abatement challenging the constitutionality of the 1947 Act on the grounds indicated. The plea in abatement was sustained as to Textile Workers Union of America, a non-resident association, apparently on the theory that non-resident individuals composing an unincorporated association have an unrestricted right, under the Fourteenth Amendment's guaranty of equal rights, to engage in lawful acts within the state and that the Act in attemping to make then amenable to process within the State lays an illegal restriction upon the right of such individuals to engage in business, on an equal footing, with citizens of Tennessee.

The Act was found not violative of Article 2, Section 17, of the Constitution of Tennessee and a trial on the merits before the court and a jury, resulted in a verdict and judgment against the remaining defendants for $10,000 actual damages and a like amount as punitive damages. All parties except Textile Workers of America (CIO) have appealed, the plaintiff from the holding that the plea in abatement should be sustained as to Textile Workers of America (CIO) and the individual defendants and Local 1054 from the overruling of various grounds of their motions for a new trial. We consider first plaintiff's appeal from the action of the Court in sustaining the plea in abatement of TextileWorkers Union of America (CIO), on the ground the Act contravenes the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Act reads:

'An Act providing for and reglating the doing of business in the State of Tennessee by unincorporated associations or organizations and providing for the service of legal process thereon.

'Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That any unincorporated association or organization, whether resident, or non-resident, now doing or hereafter desiring to do business in this State by performing any of the acts for which it was formed, shall, before any such acts are performed, appoint an agent in this State upon whom all process may be served, and certify to the Clerk of the Circuit Court of each county in which said association or organization desires to perform any of the acts for which it was organized the name and address of such process agent. If said unincorporated association or organization shall fail to appoint the process agent pursuant to this Act, all process may be served upon the Secretary of the State of Tennessee. Upon such service, the Secretary of State shall forward a copy of the process to the last known address of such unincorporated association or organization. Service upon the process agent appointed pursuant to this Act or upon the Secretary of State, if no process agent is appointed, shall be legal and binding on said association or organization, and any judgment recovered in any action commenced by service of process, as provided in this Act, shall be valid and may be collected out of any real or personal property belonging to the association or organization.

'Sec. 2. Be it further enacted, That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.'

Since the purpose of the Act, as indicated by the title, is to regulate the business of unincorporated associations within the State, the provisions for service of process are to be construed as applying only to actions growing out of the conduct of such business within the State. We have such a case here:

Local 1054 was organized prior to June 22, 1950, in Hamblen County, Tennessee, where it maintained an active organization staffed with officers including a president, a vice-president and a business agent. The parent organization conducted its activities through the local and sent representaives to Hamblen County to engage in activities growing out of the strike and designed to bring it to a successful conclusion. There is evidence from which a jury could find that both acted to establish or maintain a picket line at the plant entrance and, by threats of violence, persuade non-members not to enter the plant as employees of Enka. The record is such that a jury could reasonably find that members and sympathizers in the picket line were directed to 'thin out' employees when they attempted to enter or leave the plant.

On the morning of June 22, 1950, the picket was ranged along the highway in front of the plant entrance behind a line of four automobiles and between the automobiles and a drainage ditch. When plaintiff McDaniel and a companion, on approaching the plant entrance in an automobile, saw that the entrance was blocked they attempted to drive across a field toward the plant buildings. A number of shots thereupon came from the picket line. Some of them struck the car. Plaintiff then stopped the car and he and his companion started running toward the plant. More shots came from the picket line and plaintiff fell with a shot in his back. There is material evidence that the shots came from behind the cars over a space 20 feet in length; that members of the union were in the picket prior to the shooting and had not had an opportunity to leave prior to the shooting without being observed; that both Hash and Gregory were members of the Union and that both fired at plaintiff; that at least 47 shots were fired.

Taking the findings of the jury on material, credible evidence as we are required to do it is apparent that the acts giving rise to the present action bear an intimate relation to the activities of the unincorporated defendant organizations within the State. The question is: As applied to such a non-resident organization, are the attempts of a state to save its citizens and residents the inconvenience of going to a foreign jurisdiction to obtain redress for wrongs committed within the State and growing out of a business conducted within the State invalid as a denial of due process or the equal protection accorded citizens of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment?

Cases involving foreign corporations are not in point because they occupy a different status from that of non-resident individuals, Knox Bros. v. Wagner & Co., 141 Tenn. 348, 355, 209 S.W. 638, and numerous recent cases involving non-resident motorists are no more than persuasive since the practice of subjecting them to process is predicated upon consent implied from the use of local highways. Cases involving the power of domestic courts over non-resident individuals, under state statutes similar to the Act here under consideration, are not entirely in harmony. As will be seen the modern view is in favor of the right if the cause of action grows out of business transacted within the state.

In Knox Bros. v. Wagner & Co., supra, a partnership composed of non-residents of Tennessee carried on a business in Davidson County, Tennessee, where suit was instituted and process served on the local manager of the business in Davidson County. An attempt was made to justify the bringing of suit and the service of process in Davidson County under what is now Section 8669 of Williams' Tennessee Code, providing for service of process on an agent of an individual in counties other than his principal place of residence for actions growing out of business conducted within the County where suit is instituted. The attack there, as in this case, was based upon the theory of a violation of the 14th Amendment. The court followed Flexner v. Farson, 268 Ill. 435, 109 N.E. 327, Ann.Cas.1916D, 810, affirmed January 7, 1919 by the Supreme Court of the United States in 248 U.S. 289, 39 Sup.Ct. 97, 63 L.Ed. 250, and held unconstitutional the Tennessee statute there involved.

The opinion in the Knox Brothers case referred to the opinion of Mr. Justice Holmes in the Flexner case affirming the Illinois holding in that case that service of process could not be had in Kentucky on a local agent of an Illinois partnership under a Kentucky statute and cited, as further supporting the conclusion reached, the Federal case of Moredock v. Kirby, C.C., 118 F. 180. It becomes necessary, therefore, to trace subsequent Federal...