State ex rel. Frazier v. Coleman

• Decision Date: 05 October 1945
• Parties: STATE ex rel. FRAZIER v. COLEMAN, Sheriff.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

23 So.2d 477

156 Fla. 413

STATE ex rel. FRAZIER v. COLEMAN, Sheriff.

Florida Supreme Court

October 5, 1945

Appeal from Circuit Court, Dade County; Paul D. Barns Judge.

Joseph A Padway and Herbert S. Thatcher, both of Washington, D. C and J. F. Gordon and L. G. Egert, both of Miami, for appellant.

J. Tom Watson, Atty. Gen., and R. W. Ervin, Jr., and Howard S Bailey, Asst. Attys. Gen., for appellee.

SEBRING, Justice.

This is an appeal from an order of the circuit court remanding the appellant Frazier, to custody to await trial upon a criminal information which, as he contends, does not charge an offense against the laws of the state. The appellant is the president of a Miami local union of bus drivers. The 98 other defendants named in the information, none of whom are parties to this proceedings, are either officers of the local union or members employed by the Miami Transit Company or the Miami Beach Railway Company as bus drivers.

As appears by the record, one C. L. Jaggears, a bus driver and member of said union, was duly convicted of an assault and battery in the municipal court of Miami, and was sentence to fifteen days in the city jail. Upon learning of the conviction and incarceration of Jaggears, some of his fellow bus drivers who were also members of his union drove the busses they were operating from their regular routes of travel on the streets of Miami to the Dade County court house where the municipal judge's offices were located. There they parked their busses in such manner as to blockade one of the principal business streets of the city and, led by Frazier, stormed the judge's offices demanding the release of Jaggears. The busses where allowed to remain unattended in the streets for a period of two or three hours, until by use of threats and other forms of intimidation directed against the municipal judge the bus drivers procured the release of Jaggears. Then and only then did Frazier and his gang leave the court house and resume their regular duties.

As a result of this incident the county solicitor of Dade County filed certain criminal informations against Frazier and 98 employees of the bus companies who are charged with having participated in the demonstration at the Dade County court house. The charge in the information involved in this appeal is that the appellant and the other 98 named defendants unlawfully agreed, conspired, combined and confederated between themselves to, and did actually participate in 'a strike, walkout and cessation of work and continuation thereof without the same being authorized by a majority vote of the employees to be governed thereby,' contrary to the provisions of chapter 21968, Laws of Florida, 1943, F.S.A. § 481.01 et seq. Interlarded in the verbiage of the charge are the facts above stated.

Frazier was arrested and taken into custody upon the criminal information. He thereupon filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus to test the legality of his detention under the particular information which is the subject of this appeal. Grounds of the petition were that the information failed to charge a violation of the Florida statute upon which it was predicated; and that such statute was void and unconstitutional. The sheriff filed his return and a hearing was has on the issues made. At the conclusion of the hearing the Circuit Court of Dade County adjudged the information to be legally sufficient, the statute upon which the information was based to be constitutional, and that the petitioner should be remanded to await trial. The petitioner has taken an appeal from the order of remand.

Chapter 21968, Laws of Florida, 1943, purports to be an act to regulate the activities and affairs of labor unions, their officers, agents, organizers and other representatives. Section 9 of the act prohibits members of a labor union from participating in any 'strike, walk-out, or cessation of work or continuation thereof without the same being authorized by a majority vote of the employees to be governed thereby.' The word 'strike' is not defined in the statute; consequently in the absence of a legislative definition at variance it must be presumed that the legislature intended to use the term in its plain and ordinary signification. Smith v. State, 80 Fla. 315, 85 So. 911; State v. Tunnicliffe, 98 Fla. 731, 124 So. 279. The commonly understood meaning of the term is: 'Act of quitting work; specif., such an act done by mutual understanding by a body of workmen as a means of enforcing compliance with demands made on their employer; a stopping of work by workmen in order to obtain or resist a change in conditions of employment.' See Webster's International Dictionary, 2d Ed.; 'Economics and Problems of Labor' by Taft, p. 511; 2 Bouv.Law Dict., Rawle's Third Revision, p. 3159; 31 Am.Jur. p. 928, Sec. 191 et seq; 12 C.J. p. 569, § 54; 15 C.J.S., Conspiracy, p. 1008, § 11, subsec. a, and cases cited. As is indicated by the definition, the term ordinarily connotes a movement growing out of problems arising between the employee and the employer class, relating to hours, wages, or employment conditions, in the course of which there is a concerted suspension of employment by the employees for the purpose of enforcing certain demands against the employer, or employers. As Teller points out in his work entitled 'Labor Disputes and Collective Bargaining,' the outstanding characteristics of the strike, as that term is employed in modern times, are (1) an established employer-employee relationship between the strikers and the person or persons against whom the strike is called; (2) the existence of a dispute between the parties and the resort by labor to the weapon of concerted refusal to work as a means or method of persuasion or coercion to accomplish the employees' demands; and (3) the contention on the part of the employees that although work has ceased the employer-employee relationship continues, albeit in a state of belligerent suspension. Teller, Labor Disputes and Collective Bargaining, Vol. 1, Sec. 78, p. 236.

It takes no more than a cursory examination of the information under attack to ascertain that the facts alleged do not present a case that may be prosecuted under the statute involved, for the elements essential to a strike are not present. There was no employer-employee relationship between the disputants. There was no existing controversy between the bus drivers and their employers as to hours, wages, or conditions of labor. The enterprise was not conceived for the purpose of forcing the employers, individually or as a class, into compliance with any demands made by such employees. The venture was not set in motion to punish employers or to better the working conditions of employees generally. The actions of the appellant and his misguided companions in storming the municipal judge's chambers for the purpose of procuring the release of Jaggears--though thoroughly reprehensible and subject to censure--did not, therefore, constitute a strike but was a contumacious and lawless act directed against the municipal court of Miami and its authority in defiance of law and order, with none of the characteristics of a labor betterment movement.

One object of the writ of habeas corpus is to determine the sufficiency of an attempted charge laid and whether or not the petitioner should be held to answer the charge or some other charge reflected by the language employed in the complaint. Jones v. Cook, 146 Fla. 253, 200 So. 856. Where to the charge preferred no criminality is attached by law, the party imprisoned is entitled to discharge, Langston v. Lundsford, 122 Fla. 813, 165 So. 898, unless the charge, insufficient though it may be, is nevertheless sufficient to indicate that probable cause may exist to believe that the petitioner has committed some crime known to our law. Hepburn v. Chapman, 109 Fla. 133, 149 So. 196; Crosby v. Chapman, 114 Fla. 19, 153 So. 149; Lehman v. Sawyer, 106 Fla. 396, 143 So. 310. In such latter event, the petitioner, though entitled to be discharged from the criminal warrant upon which he is being held may be remanded conditionally for the lodgment of a proper criminal charge against him. Kirk v. Morrison, 108 Fla. 144, 146 So. 215; Jones v. Cook, supra.

The facts set forth in...