Shell Oil Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 13800.

• Decision Date: 17 June 1952
• Docket Number: No. 13800.,13800.
• Citation: 196 F.2d 637
• Parties: SHELL OIL CO. v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

196 F.2d 637 (1952)

SHELL OIL CO. v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD.

No. 13800.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

May 10, 1952.

As Amended on Denial of Rehearing June 17, 1952.

Oliver L. Stone, New York City, Geo. C. Schoenberger, Jr., New Orleans, La., for petitioner.

Owsley Vose, Atty., A. Norman Somers, Asst. Gen. Cnsl., and David P. Findling, Assoc. Gen. Cnsl., National Labor Relations Board, all of Washington, D. C., for respondent.

Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, and BORAH and RUSSELL, Circuit Judges.

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge.

Found guilty of unfair labor practices¹ and ordered to cease and desist therefrom and to make restitution to three discharged employees, Shell Oil Company has petitioned this court for relief from the order.²

The Board answering the petition and seeking enforcement, the matter is before us for determination, on the record as a whole, whether, as petitioner claims, the findings are without adequate support and the order must be set aside, or, as the Board claims, find support in the record and the order must be enforced.

Intent, the one upon overthrowing, the other upon sustaining the findings and order, each in brief and oral argument has sought to magnify the facts upon which it relies, each has sought to minimize the facts relied on by the other.

To the petitioner, the statements and acts of Petree, and others in responsible positions with the company, made in connection with the efforts of some of its employees to promote the cause of the union, appear reasonable, fair, and just, and fully in accordance with, and protected by, the Labor Management Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 141 et seq.

To the Board, these statements, these actions, appear Machiavelian, made and done with the deliberately unfair purpose of discouraging unions but cunningly planned and carried out to keep the promise of fairness and noninterference to the ear, while breaking it to the hope.

To the petitioner, the discharge of Scovel, after he had been apprehended while taking company gasoline or drainings, was but visiting upon him the just consequences of his wrongful conduct, an inherent power of management and one expressly protected by the Statute. N.L.R.B. v. Russell Mfg. Co., 5 Cir., 191 F.2d 358.

To the Board, this discharge was a deliberate act of reprisal for his union activities, a well planned and skilfully executed maneuver to give the false appearance of a discharge for cause.

To the petitioner, the discharges of Knight and Marutz, under the auspices and at the insistence of Vandivort, respondent's counsel, for their refusal to retract statements they had made, or were supposed to have made, that what Scovel did was common, indeed universal, practice in the plant, known to and permitted or condoned by the management, were the necessary consequences of their having in effect admitted that they, themselves, were guilty of forbidden practices, the penalty for which was discharge.

To the Board, these lawyer engineered and executed discharges were the final convincing proof that in all that had happened from the beginning of this Union controversy until the end of it, the fine Italian hand of legalism was at work, at the first hidden from view, at the last openly pulling the strings for the dance of the puppets.

In reply to petitioner's claim: that, since Scovel was discharged for an assigned cause, the burden was on the Board to show that Smith knew of his union activity, and that it had not done so; the Board insists that the conclusion from this record as a whole is that Smith knew plenty.

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