Feldman v. Weiner

173 Misc. 461, 17 N.Y.S.2d 730, 6 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1064, 1940 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1450
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 20, 1940
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 173 Misc. 461 (Feldman v. Weiner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Feldman v. Weiner, 173 Misc. 461, 17 N.Y.S.2d 730, 6 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1064, 1940 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1450 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1940).

Opinion

Rosenman, J.

By this motion plaintiffs seek to enjoin pendente lite all of the defendants and their agents from picketing their premises, and from otherwise interfering with their business.

There are certain undisputed facts: The plaintiffs are in the wholesale meat business in Manhattan. Their shop is completely unionized; all their employees are members of the Packing House Workers Union, Local No. 5 of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers Workmen of America, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor — a union voluntarily chosen by said employees, with which plaintiffs have a closed shop agreement. All products sold by the plaintiffs are handled and processed while on the plaintiffs’ premises exclusively by union labor; and there is no dispute of any kind between the plaintiffs and their employees, or between the plaintiffs and any union having jurisdiction over their products and employees. The defendant union is not seeking to organize the plaintiffs’ employees; nor is there any labor difficulty between the plaintiffs or their employees and the defendants. The defendant union is Local No. 805 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The defendant union is attempting to organize the employees of a firm known as the Van Iderstine Company, which is engaged in the fat rendering business in Long Island City. The Van Iderstine Company is not engaged 'in the meat industry as such, but is a [463]*463manufacturer of tallow, grease and glue. The by-products and waste materials of plaintiffs’ business include inedible fats, bones, suet and skins which the plaintiffs sell to the Van Iderstine Company from time to time, when sufficient amounts have accumulated. These periodic sales of refuse result in but incidental income to the plaintiffs. Pursuant to their efforts to unionize the Van Iderstine Company, defendants have requested plaintiffs not to sell their waste products to that company; and upon plaintiffs’ refusal to comply, defendants have caused pickets to patrol in front of plaintiffs’ place of business. The pickets carry signs reading as follows:

“PLEASE

DO NOT PATRONIZE

THIS PLACE.

THE EMPLOYEES REMOVING WASTE ARE

UNFAIR TO LOCAL 805 ”

There are certain disputed facts also: (1) The plaintiffs claim that the defendants have intimidated them, and threatened that if the plaintiffs did not discontinue the sale of their waste products bo the Van Iderstine Company, in addition to picketing, defendant would call plaintiffs’ employees out on strike, would stop deliveries of meat to plaintiffs’ place of business, would prevent retail butchers from picking up the meats purchased from plaintiffs, and would ruin plaintiffs’ business generally. The defendants deny such action, and insist that they are only picketing. (2) The plaintiffs claim that the legends on the signs carried by pickets are false and misleading; the defendants claim them to be truthful. (3) Plaintiffs claim that the defendants persist in obtrusive picketing and block up the entrance to their place of business, thus interfering with the ingress and egress of plaintiffs’ customers. This the defendants also deny.

The disputed questions of fact need not be resolved, for they do not seriously affect the questions of law presented by the undisputed facts. Do the conceded facts present a labor dispute ” within the meaning of subdivision 10 of section 876-a of the Civil Practice Act? The plaintiffs admit that they have not complied with the requirements of the prior subdivisions of that section; and if a “ labor dispute ” is here involved, an injunction pendente lite may not properly issue.

In 1937 the Court of Appeals was called upon to decide whether a labor union could picket a retailer of products purchased by him from a non-union manufacturer, and whether such picketing came [464]*464within the provisions of section 876-a of the Civil Practice Act. (Goldfinger v. Feintuch, 276 N. Y. 281.) The court held that under such circumstances, the product of the non-union manufacturer may be picketed; and that the situation presents a labor dispute within that section of the Civil Practice Act.

“ It is illegal,” said the court, to picket the place of business of one who is not himself a party to an industrial dispute to persuade the public to withdraw its patronage generally from the business for the purpose of coercing the owner to take sides in a controversy in which he has no interest * * *.

Within the limits of peaceful picketing, however, picketing may be carried on not only against the manufacturer but against a non-union product sold by one in unity of interest with the manufacturer who is in the same business for profit ” (p. 286).

The expression, unity of interest,” was not defined by the court. At least one limitation on the term may be culled from the language above used; that such picketing is lawful only where it is against a “ non-union product ” of a manufacturer who is in the same business for profit ” as the retailer.

That such limitation was intended reasonably appears from the court’s expression that We do not hold more than that where a retailer is in unity of interest with the manufacturer, the union may follow the non-union goods and seek by peaceful picketing to persuade the consuming public to refrain from purchasing the non-union product, whether that is at the plant of the manufacturer or at the store of the retailer in the same line of business and in unity of interest with the manufacturer ” (p. 287).

That this limitation was intended also appears from Judge Rippey’s concurring memorandum wherein he concurred on the ground “ that there was complete unity of interest between the plaintiff and the manufacturer. Except for the finding of unity of interest, the facts would establish a secondary boycott and would be illegal ” (p. 291).

In this case the plaintiffs are not themselves parties to an industrial dispute, for the dispute is between the defendants and the Van Iderstine Company. The picketing is not being carried on against a ■ non-union product, for all of plaintiffs’ products are unionized. It is not being carried on against a manufacturer who is in the same business for profit as the retailer, for the plaintiff is concededly in the meat business for profit while the Van Iderstine Company is in the fat rendering business and makes tallow, grease and glue for profit. The periodic sales of its waste products to the Van Iderstine Company are so small a part of plaintiffs’ business that a conclusion that the two companies are in the same business for profit cannot reasonably be made.

[465]*465The defendants claim, however, that there is such unity of interest ” here as to be a labor dispute ” under the statute because they [plaintiffs, the defendant union and the Van Iderstine Company] are engaged in the same industry and are selling products to a non-union open shop firm ” [sfc] (pp. 1, 2, answering affidavit). But this statement is unsupported by any evidentiary facts, and the conclusion is contradicted by the undisputed facts.

The problem presented in this case was anticipated soon after the holding in Goldfinger v. Feintuch (supra). “

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173 Misc. 461, 17 N.Y.S.2d 730, 6 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1064, 1940 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1450, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/feldman-v-weiner-nysupct-1940.