Humphreys, Hutcheson and Moseley v. Raymond J. Donovan, Secretary of Labor

755 F.2d 1211, 118 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2770, 1985 U.S. App. LEXIS 29481
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 20, 1985
Docket83-5564
StatusPublished
Cited by40 cases

This text of 755 F.2d 1211 (Humphreys, Hutcheson and Moseley v. Raymond J. Donovan, Secretary of Labor) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Humphreys, Hutcheson and Moseley v. Raymond J. Donovan, Secretary of Labor, 755 F.2d 1211, 118 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2770, 1985 U.S. App. LEXIS 29481 (6th Cir. 1985).

Opinion

BAILEY BROWN, Senior Circuit Judge.

This appeal involves sections 203 1 and 204 2 of Title II of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (hereinafter referred to as “Act” or “LMRDA”). 3 The issue on appeal is whether plaintiff attorneys who made speeches urging their client’s employees to vote against union representation (and who were, therefore, "persuaders”) were required by section 203(b) of the LMRDA to make the reports described by that provision. When the Secretary called upon plaintiff attorneys to make the reports contemplated by section 203(b), they filed an action for declaratory relief and an injunc *1214 tion, and the Secretary filed a counterclaim for an order requiring the attorneys to make the reports. In an extensive and careful opinion, Humphreys, Hutcheson & Moseley v. Donovan, 568 F.Supp. 161 (M.D. Tenn.1983), the district court held that the . plaintiff attorneys must comply with all of the disclosure requirements of section 203 and granted summary judgment for the Secretary.

I.

The facts in this case are undisputed. Humphreys, Hutcheson and Moseley (“HH & M”) is a law firm that practices labor law in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1977, HH & M was retained by Southern Silk Mills, Inc. to represent it during an election conducted by the NLRB. Before the election, two of the firm’s partners, William P. Hutcheson and Ray H. Moseley, made speeches to Southern Silk’s employees urging them to reject representation by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (“Union” or “ACTWU”). 4 Before he began his speech, Moseley was identified as an attorney in the law firm representing Southern Silk. In his speech to the workers, Moseley rendered an account of an unlawful strike against KayserRoth Corporation involving the same Union. 5 After describing the violence that accompanied the Kayser-Roth strike, Moseley urged the assembled employees to vote against the Union. 6 Hutcheson also described the Kayser-Roth strike violence and exhorted the employees to reject union representation.

On September 7, 1978, the Department of Labor (“Department”), through its Nashville, Tennessee office, contacted HH & M by mail, stating that it had received an inquiry regarding the firm’s persuader ac-tivities during the Southern Silk Mills election. The Department informed HH & M that because Mr. Moseley and Mr. Hutcheson had attempted to persuade the employ-ees to reject the Union, the firm must disclose its agreement with Southern Silk pursuant to section 203 of the LMRDA. The Department also instructed HH & M that it must file an annual financial report, Form LM-21, reporting inter alia “re-ceiPts and disbursements of any kind in connection with labor relations advice and services.”

H.

HH & M contends that the statute prop-erly interpreted does not require it to file the reports contemplated by section 203(b) and that if it does, the statute is unconstitutional. The Secretary, of course, contends the contrary. We approach the is-sues as did the parties,

A.

Under LMRDA section 203, a person who agrees to engage or who engages in per-suader activities must file a thirty day report and an annual report The Secretary has authorized the use of Form LM-20 for the thirty day report, 29 C.F.R. § 406.2 (1984)) and Form LM_2i for the annual report) 29 C.F.R. § 406.3(a) (1984). The annual report is more comprehensive than the thirty day report. The annual report requires the persuader to disclose all receipts from all employers on account of labor relations advice or services and the persuader must' designate the source of these receipts. In addition, the persuader *1215 must reveal all of his disbursements made in connection with his labor relations advice and services, and the persuader must specify the purpose for these disbursements.

HH & M has stipulated that it has acted as a persuader, yet it contends that the firm should be excused from filing the reports, especially the annual report. HH & M first argues that section 203(b) of the statute is inapplicable to the firm because it did not act as a covert middleman. It is undisputed that the HH & M partners identified themselves as attorneys representing Southern Silk management before speaking to its employees. HH & M contends that the LMRDA is aimed at covert management middlemen who engage in activities such as spying, bribery and influence peddling rather than at persuaders who openly engage in “legitimate” persuasive activities such as the speeches given by the partners of the firm who were disclosed persuaders.

When enacting the LMRDA, Congress did not distinguish between disclosed and undisclosed persuaders or between legitimate and nefarious persuasive activities. Rather, Congress determined that persuasion itself was a suspect activity and concluded that the possible evil could best be remedied through disclosure. It was hoped that persuasive activity would be curbed by subjecting persuaders to glaring publicity. We agree with the summation of congressional intent set forth by the Fifth Circuit in Price v. Wirtz, 412 F.2d 647 (5th Cir.1969) (en banc):

The legislative judgment that one who engages in the persuader business must be subjected to the pressure of revealing publicity is amply justified by the difficulty in distinguishing between those activities that are persuader activities and those that are not, and by the opportunity for misleading concealment of the true nature of such Attorney’s work in situations involving intricate corporate conglomerate associates or, equally pressing, industry-wide labor controversies. Behind this judgment, of course, was the congressional conviction that quite without regard to the motives or methods of particular individuals engaging in it, the persuader business was detrimental to good labor relations and the continued public interest. Since a principal object of LMRDA was neutralizing the evils of persuaders, it was quite legitimate and consistent with the Act’s main sanction of goldfishbowl publicity to turn the spotlight on the lawyer who wanted not only to serve clients in labor relations matters encompassed within § 203(c) but who wanted also to wander into the legislatively suspect field of a persuader.

Id. at 650 (footnotes omitted). We find the fact that the attorneys identified themselves to the Southern Silk employees did not remove them from the ambit of LMRDA section 203(b).

B.

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755 F.2d 1211, 118 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2770, 1985 U.S. App. LEXIS 29481, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/humphreys-hutcheson-and-moseley-v-raymond-j-donovan-secretary-of-labor-ca6-1985.