Sunfire Coal Company v. United Mine Workers of America, 14832.

• Decision Date: 16 February 1963
• Docket Number: No. 14832.,14832.
• Citation: 313 F.2d 108
• Parties: SUNFIRE COAL COMPANY, a corporation, and Ashlo Coal Company, a corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

313 F.2d 108 (1963)

SUNFIRE COAL COMPANY, a corporation, and Ashlo Coal Company, a corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 14832.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

February 16, 1963.

M. E. Boiarsky, Charleston, W. Va. and Harrison Combs, Washington, D. C. (H. B. Noble, Hazard, Ky., on brief), for appellant.

Logan E. Patterson, Pineville, Ky., and James S. Greene, Jr., Harlan, Ky., for appellees.

Before WEICK and O'SULLIVAN, Circuit Judges, and PECK, District Judge.

PECK, District Judge.

On April 25, 1959, a coal tipple at Combs, Perry County, Kentucky, owned by one of the plaintiff corporations and operated by the other, burned. Thereafter, plaintiffs instituted this action to recover damages allegedly occasioned by such burning, and after jury trial and verdict judgment was entered in favor of the plaintiff Sunfire Coal Company, the owner and lessor of the premises in question, in the amount of $250,000 against the defendant, and in favor of the Ashlo Coal Company, the lessee and operator, in the sum of $14,000, also against this defendant. From that judgment, and from the trial court's order denying its motion for a new trial, defendant has perfected this appeal.

The burning of the coal tipple climaxed a period of intense labor unrest which had endured nearly a month and a half. The record discloses that during that time contract negotiations were in progress between District 30, United Mine Workers of America, and at least some of 176 coal operators in the vicinity to whom sixty-day notices terminating a prior agreement had been sent on January 7, 1959; plaintiffs, not having been parties to the prior agreement, did not receive such a notice, which also contained an offer to negotiate a new contract. Picketing at the subject premises (hereinafter referred to as the Ashlo tipple) commenced March 16th and continued until the date of the fire, and the unrest referred to included the operation of a motorcade throughout the area for three days; this motorcade was varyingly described as containing from seventy-five to three hundred cars at different times, and its ostensible purpose was to determine which of the mines in the area were operating. The Kentucky State Police were in constant contact with the situation, arrested one individual for attempting to incite a riot, and in general maintained a vigilant surveillance of the area. Most of the 57 witnesses who testified contributed bits of testimony of tacks strewn on the road, of truck tailgates opened to let coal fall to the highway, of boisterous and unruly conduct, of spasmodic shooting and dynamiting, of bullets shot into a coal truck, of knife-slashed tires, of dirty name calling and personal threats, all combining to create a picture of general disturbance and disquiet throughout the community.

On April 24, 1959, there were a dozen state troopers at Combs and one of them testified that on that day the pickets on the road near the Ashlo tipple "continued to come in, there were so many of them, they were out of hand. * * * they were just falling in there in carloads." In the course of the day, an attempt by defendant's representatives to get the coal company to execute a contract was unsuccessful.

Shortly after 6 o'clock a. m. the following day the Ashlo tipple burned. During the night, water tanks on the premises had been drained, and the destruction was extensive. Estimates of the number of pickets at the scene the preceding day ran as high as one thousand, and the disturbance continued throughout the night, the testimony indicating that there was considerable shooting toward the tipple, some of which came from the direction of the pickets. A state trooper who saw the fire start testified that a man ran from the tipple less than fifteen minutes earlier, and tracking by bloodhounds disclosed a place at which one or more persons had been sitting, from which such persons were tracked some miles to a point where they apparently got into an automobile. The record discloses no positive evidence of the origin or of the originators of the fire, but there is circumstantial evidence which the plaintiffs claim support their contention that it was deliberately set by or at the instigation of the defendant.

The Complaint herein was filed under the provisions of Section 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, as amended by Public Law 86-257, 1959, and defendant first contends that no damage to plaintiffs' property and business within the meaning of that Section has been alleged or proven. Since...