Frank W. McCulloch Etc. v. Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co.

403 F.2d 916

• Court: Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
• Decided: January 13, 1969
• Docket: 21744_1
• Status: Published

Opinions

EDGERTON, Senior Circuit Judge:

The members of the National Labor Relations Board (the Board) appeal from a District Court order enjoining them from holding elections at two plants of the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co. (the Company). We granted a partial stay which permitted the elections but restrained the Board from issuing any order based on them.

Ten of the Company’s plants are involved in this litigation. Eight of them are members of a single collective bargaining unit and each of the other two is a separate bargaining unit. All three units are represented by United Glass and Ceramic Workers (the Union). The Union petitioned the Board for a unit clarification order combining the three units. After a hearing, the Board found that either the three existing separate bargaining units or a combined ten-plant unit would be appropriate and ordered elections at the two separate units to ascertain the views of the employees. After our grant of a partial stay the elections were held and the employees in each of the two voted to join the multiplant unit.

The Company contends that in the absence of a representation question the Board lacks statutory authority to hold elections and to join bargaining units through its unit clarification procedure. 29 C.F.R. § 102.60(b). The Board admits that there is no representation issue and that its action is novel but claimis the requisite authority under § 9(b) of the National Labor Relations Act.¹ We intimate no opinion on this claim for we find that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain it.

Judicial review of representation proceedings is very limited. Ordinarily it must await an appeal from an unfair labor practice order. 29 U.S.C. § 159(d) (1958). A District Court may enjoin Board action, especially representation proceedings, only under highly exceptional circumstances.² It may correct a Board violation of a “clear, specific and mandatory provision of the Act.” Lawrence Typographical Union v. McCulloch, 121 U.S.App.D.C. 269, 271, 349 F.2d 704, 706 (1965). It may enjoin threatened Board action which violates the Constitution. Id. at 273, 349 F.2d at 708. Since Congress expressly restricted judicial review in order to prevent delay in certification and to expedite the settlement of labor disputes,³ the showing that the Board has violated the Act or deprived a plaintiff of constitutional rights must be strong and clear.

No such violation or deprivation appears in this record. As we said in Local 130, Internat’l Union of Elec., Radio & Machine Workers v. McCulloch, 120 U.S.App.D.C. 196. 201, 345 F.2d 90, 95 (1965):

* * * to say that there are possible infirmities in an action taken by the Board by reason of an erroneous or arbitrary exertion of its authority in respect of the facts before it is not to conclude that there is jurisdiction in the District Court to intervene by injunction. For such jurisdiction to exist, the Board must have stepped so plainly beyond the bounds of the Act, or acted so clearly in defiance of it, as to warrant the immediate intervention of an equity court * * *.

The Board’s action in this case, if at all inconsistent with the Act, was certainly not so “plainly beyond” its bounds or so “clearly in defiance” of it. We therefore remand the case to the District Court with directions to dismiss the complaint.

Reversed and remanded.

1 . 29 U.S.C. § 159(b).

2 . The major case is Leedom v. Kyne, 358 U.S. 184, 79 S.Ct. 180, 3 L.Ed.2d 210 (1958), in which the Court first recognized the possibility that in some exceptional circumstances the district court could exercise its general equity jurisdiction. In later cases, the Court has indicated that the exception is very narrow. McCulloch v. Sociedad National de Marineros, 372 U.S. 10, 16, 83 S.Ct. 671, 9 L.Ed.2d 547 (1963); Boire v. Greyhound Corp., 376 U.S. 473, 481, 84 S.Ct. 894, 11 L.Ed.2d 849 (1964).

3 . For a review of the legislative history see Leedom v. Kyne, 358 U.S. 184, 191 et seq., 79 S.Ct. 180, 3 L.Ed.2d 210 (1958) (Brennan, J., dissenting).