Mead School Dist. No. 354 v. Mead Ed. Ass'n (MEA), 43322

• Decision Date: 24 April 1975
• Docket Number: No. 43322,43322
• Citation: 85 Wn.2d 278,534 P.2d 561
• Parties: , 89 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3068, 77 Lab.Cas. P 53,709 MEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 354, a Municipal Corporation, Respondent, v. MEAD EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (MEA), an association, et al., Appellants.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

Page 278

85 Wn.2d 278

534 P.2d 561, 89 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3068,

77 Lab.Cas. P 53,709

MEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 354, a Municipal Corporation, Respondent, v. MEAD EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (MEA), an association, et al., Appellants.

No. 43322.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

April 24, 1975.

Mark E. Vovos, William J. Powell, Spokane, for appellants.

Trezona Lorenz, Parry & Esposito, Edward J. Parry, Spokane, Donald C. Brockett, Pros. Atty., Jerry Neal, Garald A. Gesinger, Deputy Pros. Attys., Spokane, for respondent.

UTTER, Associate Justice.

This is an appeal by the Mead Education Association and several of its officers from an order adjudging them in contempt for defying the Spokane County Superior Court's temporary injunction of a teachers' strike. In Mead School Dist. v. Mead Educ. Ass'n, 85 Wash.2d 140, 530 P.2d 302 (1975), we reversed the trial court's grant of that injunction. In this case we must determine whether the contempt citations survive the invalidating of the injunction and, if so, whether they were proper despite several other alleged irregularities cited by appellants. We hold the impropriety of the injunction does not vitiate these contempt convictions, but that the judgments against the individual defendants were impermissibly based on evidence obtained in violation of their privileges against self-incrimination. We therefore reverse the convictions of the association officers, but affirm that of the association itself.

On April 29, 1974, the Mead School District filed a lawsuit seeking to enjoin a strike by its employees, members of the Mead Education Association. Its complaint was met by a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the suit was authorized at a school board meeting held in violation of the Open Public Meetings Act of 1971. The trial court denied the motion; in so doing, it erred. Mead School Dist. v. Mead Educ. Ass'n, Supra. ¹ Evidence was then taken and argument heard regarding the need for and propriety of a temporary restraining order, which the court finally issued. The next day this order was supplanted by a substantially similar temporary injunction against the strike.

It was this injunction which we held erroneously issued in Mead School Dist. v. Mead Educ. Ass'n, Supra, and it was for violating this injunction that appellants were held in contempt. The threshold question presented by this case, then, is whether the fact that the injunction was later adjudged to be invalid excuses the appellants' allegedly contemptuous conduct. Both parties rather facilely assume it does. We do not agree.

The traditional measure of the vitality of a contempt conviction for violation of a court order when the order itself is found to have been improper is the scope of the jurisdiction of the issuing court. '(W)here the court has jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject matter of the suit and the legal authority to make the order, a party refusing to obey it, however erroneously made, is liable for contempt.' Dike v. Dike, 75 Wash.2d 1, 8, 448 P.2d 490, 495 (1968), quoting Robertson v. Commonwealth, 181 Va. 520, 536, 25 S.E.2d 352 (1943); Deskins v. Waldt, 81 Wash.2d 1, 5, 499 P.2d 206 (1972). 'The test of the jurisdiction of a court is whether or not it had power to enter upon the inquiry, not whether its conclusion in the course of it was right or wrong.' State v. Olsen, 54 Wash.2d 272, 274, 340 P.2d 171, 172 (1959), quoting 12 A.L.R.2d 1059, 1066 (1950).

In most circumstances the application of this principle is relatively straightforward, and the distinction between errors of law and arrogations of power fairly easy to draw. Where it has not been courts have compounded it and fashioned the concept of 'jurisdiction to determine jurisdiction.' United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 67 S.Ct. 677, 91 L.Ed. 884 (1947); United States v. Shipp, 203 U.S. 563, 27 S.Ct. 165, 51 L.Ed. 319 (1906). These cases hold that a court's order must be obeyed if it had the power to decide whether it was authorized to issue it, even if it is later held that it was not so authorized. They are based on the fundamental premise that when a question of authority is raised, someone must decide it, and the initial decision is going to be made by the forum court itself.

Were we to follow blindly the literal language of either of these 'jurisdiction' tests, appellants' contempt convictions would fall with the order on which they were based. The trial court's power to issue the injunction against the teachers' strike, and its power to decide whether it had that power, was predicated on there being a case before it. We have found there was not: the plaintiff failed to properly invoke the jurisdiction of the superior court. Mead School Dist. v. Mead Educ. Ass'n, Supra. Technically, the court lacked jurisdiction over the parties, and virtually all the authorities in this area assume that such a defect will deprive a court of the authority to issue lawful orders and enforce them through contempt. See e.g., United States v. United Mine Workers, Supra, 330 U.S. at 294, 67 S.Ct. 677; State v. Olsen, Supra, 54 Wash.2d at 274, 340 P.2d 171; State v. Lew, 25 Wash.2d 854, 869--70, 172 P.2d 289 (1946); State ex rel. Bogle v. Superior Court, 63 Wash. 96, 114 P. 905 (1911); Z. Chafee, Jr., Some Problems of Equity 301, 379 (1950); Cox, The Void Order and the Duty to Obey, 16 U.Chi.L.Rev. 86, 110 (1948); Annot., 12 A.L.R.2d 1059, 1066 (1950).

Very few cases, however, have actually involved a flaw in 'jurisdiction' similar to the one here. Where contempt convictions have been reversed on such grounds, there has been a much more serious and obvious usurpation of power by the offended court. For example, jurisdiction has been found absent where the case underlying the violated order was not a kind the court was competent to hear (In re Ayers, 123 U.S. 443, 8 S.Ct. 164, 31 L.Ed. 216 (1887); State ex rel. Hillman v. Gordon, 105 Wash. 326, 177 P. 773 (1919); State ex rel. News Publishing Co. v. Milligan, 3 Wash. 144, 28 P. 369 (1891)), where the order itself was not one the court was authorized to issue (State ex rel. Snohomish County v. Sperry, 79 Wash.2d 69, 483 P.2d 608 (1971), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 939, 92 S.Ct. 272, 30 L.Ed.2d 252 (1971); Pearce v. Pearce, 37 Wash.2d 918, 226 P.2d 895 (1951)), and where the person held in contempt was not properly brought within reach of the court's process (State ex rel. Evans v. Winder, 14 Wash. 114, 44 P. 125 (1896); State ex rel. Boardman v. Ball, 5 Wash. 387, 31 P. 975 (1892)).

These decisions reflect the fundamental role the contempt power plays in the work of an equity court, and illustrate the essential errors which consequently must exist before that power can be nullified.

The power of a court, created by the Constitution, to punish for contempt for disobedience of its mandates, is inherent. The power comes into being upon the very creation of such a court and remains with it as long as the court exists. Without such power, the court could ill exercise any other power, for it would then be nothing more than a mere advisory body.

Blanchard v. Golden Age Brewing, Co., 188 Wash. 396, 423, 63 P.2d 397, 408 (1936); Keller v. Keller, 52 Wash.2d 84, 88, 323 P.2d 231 (1958). The 'jurisdiction' test measures whether a court, in issuing an order or holding in contempt those who defy it, was performing the sort of function for which judicial power was vested in it. If, but only if, it was not, its process is not entitled to the respect due that of a lawful judicial body. 'Only when a court is so obviously traveling outside its orbit as to be merely usurping judicial forms and facilities, may (its order) be disobeyed and treated as though it were a letter to a newspaper.' United States v. United Mine Workers, Supra, 330 U.S. at 309--10, 67 S.Ct. at 704 (Frankfurter, J. concurring).

Talismanic invocation of the phrase 'lack of jurisdiction,' therefore, is not enough to vitiate a contempt conviction. It must appear that the document which forbade the acts the contemnors committed was only a writing by a judge, not the lawful process of a court. A defect in jurisdiction will ordinarily render it such, but is not necessarily conclusive. '(T)here are many kinds of jurisdiction--of the person, over the place, in equity, as a federal court. It cannot now be broadly asserted that a judgment is always a nullity if jurisdiction of some sort or other is wanting.' Carter v. United States, 135 F.2d 858, 861 (5th Cir. 1943).

The only flaw in the trial court's jurisdiction cited by the appellants is the lack of proper authorization for the lawsuit brought before it by the Mead School District. ² The district had the power to bring this sort of suit, and the trial court to hear it, but the district's lawyers had not legally been empowered to represent it in this case by any binding resolution of its board of directors. We cannot see how this should in any way diminish the respect due the order of the superior court. The defect was in the plaintiff, not the court. ³

Use of the contempt power to enforce court orders has been upheld where plaintiffs obtained them through irregular procedures (Critelli v. Tidrick, 244 Iowa 462, 56 N.W.2d 159 (1952)), filed a defective complaint (United States v. Agler, 62 F. 824 (C.C.D.Ind.1894); Ex Parte Joutsen, 154 Cal. 540, 98 P. 391 (1908); O'Brien v. People ex rel. Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Co., 216 Ill. 354, 75 N.E. 108 (1905)), or failed to post a required bond (State ex rel. Brown v. McFaul, 27 Wash. 286, 67 P. 564 (1902)). When corporations have brought suits which they lack the legal ability to maintain, their incapacity has been found not to deprive the court of jurisdiction or subject its orders to collateral attack in contempt proceedings. Franklin Union No. 4 v. People, 220 Ill. 355, 365, 77 N.E. 176 (1906); Cf. Johnson & Wight, Inc. v. Rickard, 115 Vt. 118, 52 A.2d 786 (1947). ⁴ All these cases recognize that flaws which do...