People v. Medrano

• Decision Date: 02 March 1978
• Docket Number: Cr. 8962
• Citation: 144 Cal.Rptr. 217,78 Cal.App.3d 198
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: , 98 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2829, 86 Lab.Cas. P 55,207 The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Francisco Franco MEDRANO and Jan Peterson, Defendants and Appellants.

Page 217

144 Cal.Rptr. 217

78 Cal.App.3d 198, 98 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2829,

86 Lab.Cas. P 55,207

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Francisco Franco MEDRANO and Jan Peterson, Defendants and Appellants.

Cr. 8962.

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

March 2, 1978.

Rehearing Denied March 20, 1978.

Jerome Cohen, Sanford N. Nathan, Salinas, George C. Lazar, San Diego, Mary H. Mocine, Oakland, W. Daniel Boone, E. Michael Heumann and Glen Rothner, Salinas, for defendants and appellants.

Harry J. Delizonna, Gen. Counsel, Dennis Sullivan, Chief of Litigation, Sacramento, Ellen Lake, Asst. Chief of Litigation, San Francisco, and Manuel Medeiros, Davis, Counsel, as amicus curiae on behalf of Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen., Jack R. Winkler, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Arnold O. Overoye, Asst. Atty. Gen., Marjory Winston Parker, and Roger E. Venturi, Deputy Attys. Gen., on behalf of plaintiff and respondent.

FRIEDMAN, ^* Associate Justice.

Opinion on rehearing. Here we deal, first, with a claim that California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 (ALRA; Lab.Code, § 1140 et seq.) divested the municipal court of jurisdiction to try two union organizers on a misdemeanor trespass charge and, second, with a claim that the criminal prosecution infringed constitutional freedoms of communication possessed by defendants and by the farm workers they sought to address.

A municipal court jury found defendants guilty of violating Penal Code section 602, subdivision (n) ¹ by trespassing upon property leased to a farm labor contractor. Defendants appealed to the superior court and we ordered the appeal transferred here for decision. (Code Civ.Proc., § 911; Cal.Rules of Court, rule 63.)

The events are described in a settled statement on appeal. The incident occurred at a farm labor camp operated by Alphonso De Dios, a licensed farm labor contractor, on property leased from a third person. On the property were five buildings occupied by farm workers and their families. De Dios lived in a mobile home on the same premises. The property was surrounded by a fence. A gate which was usually unlocked provided entry. Several labor camps operated by other contractors were nearby. De Dios imposed no restriction on entry or exit of workers and visitors but did require solicitors to obtain permission to enter the property.

At the time of the incident, September 13, 1975, De Dios was absent from the camp and had left his son Robert in charge. Robert De Dios worked as a labor supervisor for his father and resided at another of his father's labor camps. In the late afternoon he saw two organizers for the United Farm Workers Union on the premises and asked them to leave. The organizers complied with the request and reported back to defendant Jan Peterson, the area supervisor for the union. Peterson had sent the organizers to De Dios' labor camp after learning earlier that day that a representation election for employees of Vista Verde Farms had been scheduled by the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) for the following day. Some of the occupants of De Dios' labor camp worked for Vista Verde Farms.

Upon learning that the organizers had been asked to leave De Dios' camp, Jan Peterson and several other organizers went to the premises, entered without resistance and began knocking on the doors of workers' living quarters to inquire whether they were employees of Vista Verde Farms and whether they needed transportation to the polling sites for the coming election. Within a half-hour of their arrival Robert De Dios confronted them and asked them to leave. When Peterson, the spokesperson, rejected the request, De Dios telephoned the sheriff's department. Sheriff's deputies arrived within 20 minutes and conferred briefly with Peterson, who told them that the organizers were entitled to be on the premises. At about the same time defendant Francisco Medrano entered the labor camp. He too was an organizer for the United Farm Workers. The sheriff's deputies approached the group of organizers with whom Peterson was standing and asked them to leave the premises. Robert De Dios made a similar request. The other organizers complied but defendant Peterson remained behind and was cited for trespass. Standing some distance away, Medrano watched the group of organizers disperse, after De Dios requested them to leave. As Medrano awaited instructions from Peterson, a deputy sheriff approached him and issued a trespass citation.

Three residents of the camp testified that they had not invited defendants to enter the premises on the day in question and did not consider them to be welcome. At trial both defendants testified that they had entered this particular labor camp without incident on earlier occasions. On the first day Medrano had gone to De Dios' residence to seek permission to enter the camp but had found no one home. Jan Peterson testified that she had been at the De Dios' camp on prior occasions and had always received a pleasant reception.

Counsel for the ALRB have filed an amicus curiae brief devoted primarily to the theme that union access to the farm labor camp was arguably protected by the ALRA, hence that the municipal court had no jurisdiction to try the trespass charge. Attorneys for the two defendants emphasize the claimed interference with free speech.

I

The lack-of-jurisdiction argument advanced by amici curiae is premised upon the "preemption doctrine" developed under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq. According to that doctrine, when labor union activity is arguably among the "concerted activities" extended to labor by the act, federal and state courts generally defer to the exclusive competence of the National Labor Relations Board, the agency delegated by Congress to administer the act. (See generally, Farmer v. Carpenters (1977) 430 U.S. 290, 97 S.Ct. 1056, 51 L.Ed.2d 338; San Diego Bldg. Trades Council v. Garmon (1959) 359 U.S. 236, 245, 79 S.Ct. 773, 3 L.Ed.2d 775; Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. San Diego County Dist. Council of Carpenters (1976) 17 Cal.3d 893, 896-898, 132 Cal.Rptr. 443, 553 P.2d 603.) The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act was closely modeled after the federal law. Indeed, one provision of the ALRA, Labor Code section 1148, expressly directs the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board to follow the applicable precedents of the National Labor Relations Act.

Like section 7 of the NLRA, section 1152 of the Labor Code enumerates the rights of organization, collective bargaining and concerted activities possessed by employees. Combining the features of section 8 of the NLRA, Labor Code section 1153 enumerates unfair labor practices on the part of agricultural employers and section 1154 the unfair labor practices of labor organizations. Other provisions of the California law (§§ 1156-1159) follow the federal model, directing the ALRB to supervise elections in which agricultural employees may select a union to represent them in collective bargaining. (See Agricultural Labor Relations Bd. v. Superior Court (1976) 16 Cal.3d 392, 398-400, 128 Cal.Rptr. 183, 546 P.2d 687.) Sections 1160 et seq. authorize the ALRB to prevent "any person" from engaging in an "unfair labor practice" as defined by the preceding provisions of the act. The ALRB procedure is the exclusive method of redressing unfair labor practices. (Lab.Code, § 1160.9.)

In designating the NLRA precedents as guideposts, the ALRA apparently incorporates into California law the general features of the preemption doctrine. (United Farm Workers v. Superior Court (1977) 72 Cal.App.3d 268, 273, 140 Cal.Rptr. 87; see also, Nishikawa Farms, Inc. v. Mahony (1977) 66 Cal.App.3d 781, 136 Cal.Rptr. 233.)

The enumeration of employee rights under statutes such as the federal NLRA and the California ALRA carries with it a statutory assurance of free communication essential to the realization of those rights; when organizing and choice-of-representative activities transport labor advocates onto the employer's land, the resolution of conflicting rights will be resolved by seeking a "proper accommodation" with the objective of inflicting "as little destruction of one as is consistent with the maintenance of the other;" subject to ultimate review, the labor board has preemptive jurisdiction to establish the accommodation. (National Labor Rel. Bd. v. Babcock & Wilcox (1956) 351 U.S. 105, 112, 76 S.Ct. 679, 684, 100 L.Ed. 975; Hudgens v. NLRB (1976) 424 U.S. 507, 522, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 47 L.Ed.2d 196; Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB (1972) 407 U.S. 539, 544, 92 S.Ct. 2238, 33 L.Ed.2d 122; Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. San Diego County Dist. Council of Carpenters, supra, 17 Cal.3d at pp. 897-898, 132 Cal.Rptr. 443, 553 P.2d 603; Agricultural Labor Relations Bd. v. Superior Court, supra, 16 Cal.3d at pp. 404-409, 128 Cal.Rptr. 183, 546 P.2d 687.)

The statutory assurance includes a ticket of limited admission to nonemployee union organizers; an employer may bar organizers from his property if other channels of communication are open to them; if the location of the plant and the living quarters of the employees place the latter beyond reach, the employer must allow the union to approach the employees on his property. (National Labor Rel. Bd. v. Babcock & Wilcox, supra, 351 U.S. at p. 113, 76 S.Ct. 679; Agricultural Labor Relations Bd. v. Superior Court, supra, 16 Cal.3d at pp. 409-411, 128 Cal.Rptr. 183, 546 P.2d 687.) Labor organizing activity may elicit the labor legislation's communicative protections even if the activity might otherwise be a trespass on the employer's private property. (Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. San Diego County Dist. Council of Carpenters, supra, 17 Cal.3d at p. 899, 132 Cal.Rptr. 443, 553 P.2d 603; Musician's Union, Local No. 6 v. Superior Court (1968) 69 Cal.2d 695, 711, 73 Cal.Rptr. 201, 447 P.2d 313.)

An ongoing problem under the NLRA is whether the...