Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union No. 3

164 F.2d 71, 21 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2034, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 3691, 1947 Trade Cas. (CCH) 57,637
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit·Decided November 6, 1947·No. No. 37, Docket 20687·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

CLARK, Circuit Judge.

This appeal brings up for review the action taken by the district court in compliance with the mandate. of the Supreme Court of the United States on remand of this case to it. ' The suit as originally brought to the district court was one seeking a declaratory judgment and an injunction against various activities of the defendant union and its officers as constituting a conspiracy in restraint of trade contrary to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq. The case was referred to a master, who filed his report containing extensive findings of fact and conclusions of law favorable to the plaintiffs’ contention. D.C., 41 F.Supp. 727. Thereafter the district court confirmed the master’s report, with some limited alterations and additions, and granted the judgment and injunction. D.C., 51 F.Supp. 36. On appeal, this court was in agreement that the injunction was too broad, since it prohibited many legitimate union activities. On the further important issue as to the effect of activities committed by the union officers in combination with various nonunion manufacturers and contractors of electrical equipment in the New York City area to boycott the products of non-local manufacturers, such as the plaintiffs, a majority of this court, Judge Swan dissenting, held that the attempted distinction between acts as legal when done by the union alone, and illegal when done in co-operation with the employers, was too vague and shadowy to be upheld under the then prevailing precedents of the Supreme Court. Accordingly we reversed the judgment and ordered the action dismissed. 2 Cir., 145 F.2d 215. The Supreme Court, however, reversed our holding, deciding that acts by business men which otherwise would violate the Sherman Act still did so, notwithstanding the shield of union cooperation, and that an otherwise illegal conspiracy did not become legal when aided and abetted by a union. The Court explicitly agreed with our view that the injunction improperly prohibited legitimate, as well as illegal, union activities. Accordingly upon reversal of our judgment the Court ordered the cause “remanded to the district court for modification and clarification of the judgment and injunction, consistent with this opinion.” 325 U.S. 797, 812, 813, 65 S.Ct. 1533, 89 L.Ed. 1939.

Upon remand the district court, after receiving and considering proposed drafts from both plaintiffs and defendants, entered the judgment and injunction here in question. It felt it had no power to change the details of the findings of fact, 374 in number, which were included in the former judgment,- but did modify the conclusions of law, the declaratory judgment, the order for the injunction, and the writ of injunction itself. Thus of the 128 pages of the printed judgment and injunction, it changed only the last 14 pages. The changes made were by way of amendment, not redraft, of the former provisions, substantially by the addition of general language stating that the activities of the union as set forth in the detailed findings were illegal when done in combination and conspiracy with non-labor contractors and manufacturers “to control prices and markets for such equipment by stifling competition for the benefit of both the defendants and such contractors and manufacturers.” Such expressions as “that the activities of the defendants, as hereinbefore set forth1 to the extent that they are carried on in combination and conspiracy with non-[73]*73labor groups, * * * were, and are, illegal” still carry the detailed findings over into the judgment and injunction. ■

In attacking the present judgment, defendants again present the draft they offered to the trial court as the most appropriate means of carrying out the mandate of the Supreme Court. Before considering their contentions in some detail we think it appropriate to say that the judgment appealed from does not follow the form which we should adopt as preferable, were we acting as a court of first instance. In our previous decision we criticized the inclusion in the judgment of the lengthy, verbose, and repetitive findings, many of which are now irrelevant because of the changed conceptions of the Anti-Trust Law occurring during the protracted hearings in the case. We still feel that better practice would relegate these lengthy findings, as well as the conclusions of law, to a separate document not formally a part of the judgment proper, and that it would also restrict the judgment to a concise recital of the prohibited acts without lengthy repetitive detail intermingled by reference with facts elsewhere stated. As it stands, defendants, even when engaged in legitimate union activities, are likely to provoke the flinging at them, in literal truth, of a whole book' of federal prohibitions contained in pages of abstract and technical legal detail. Under the circumstances, separating the licit from the illicit seems a heavy task for the workers and union officials, against whom the court’s command is directed. Nevertheless, in view of the district court’s large measure of discretion as to the wording of its decrees, Linde Air Products Co. v. Morse Dry Dock & Repair Co., 2 Cir., 246 F. 834, 836, as well as the defendants’ own adoption of this type of judgment in their draft, and the intermediate nature of our own rulings as this case journeys again to the Supreme Court for final adjudication, we think it would serve no good purpose for us here to go outside the issues presented by the drafts considered below.

The first of the defendants’ proposals is that some 230 or more of the 354 findings of fact be omitted, as relating only to permissible combinations of labor officials and as having no relevance to a combination of labor and non-labor elements. We are clear, however, that these unchallenged findings of fact cannot now be substantially revised through the process of selection and omission. Whatever their present value or relevance, they are the findings upon which decision in this action now turns. We think they must stand as such and their relevance evaluated not by revision through omission, but by the explicit terms of the declaratory judgment and the injunction. Moreover, any danger of misunderstanding will be avoided, we believe, by the modifications and additions ordered hereinafter. This contention we therefore overrule.

Defendants next seek a revision of the conclusions of law set forth in the master’s report and the district court’s judgment. Actually the court did revise its conclusions and reduce their number. Here, too, we think clarity would have been promoted, and the danger of confusion by repetition avoided, had the conclusions covered only the court’s jurisdiction and the further general statement that defendants had violated the Anti-Trust Act and plaintiffs were entitled to the remedies, all as thereinafter stated and provided. But here, too, under the circumstances we feel compelled to follow the mold fashioned below. Since, however, these conclusions control not only the declaratory judgment, but also the order for the injunction, and the writ of injunction itself, we \;hink their terms can be better settled in the sharper perspective afforded by these latter provisions, and most directly in the court’s order for the injunction.

Here the controversy centers most sharply about the clause quoted above, which defines the nature of the combination and conspiracy by the union with non-labor groups.

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Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union No. 3, 164 F.2d 71, 21 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2034, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 3691, 1947 Trade Cas. (CCH) 57,637 (2d Cir. 1947).

164 F.2d 71 (Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union No. 3) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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