International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union v. Ackerman

82 F. Supp. 65
CourtDistrict Court, D. Hawaii
DecidedJanuary 18, 1949
DocketCiv. 828, 836
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 82 F. Supp. 65 (International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union v. Ackerman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Hawaii primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union v. Ackerman, 82 F. Supp. 65 (D. Haw. 1949).

Opinion

BIGGS, Circuit Judge.

The two cases at bar may be disposed of in one opinion. The general jurisdiction of the court (its jurisdiction under Section 266 of the former Judicial Code and under Section 2281 of revised Title 28 of the United States Code, Annotated, effective September 1, 1948, aside) is alleged to be founded on the second, third and fourth Federal Civil Rights Acts, Act of May 31, 1870, 16 Stat. 140, Act of April 20, 1871, 17 Stat. 13, and Act of March 1, 1875, 18 Stat. 335, 337, R.S. §§ 1977, 1979, 8 U.S.C.A. §§ 41, 43, 44 and 46, and upon Section 24(14) of the Judicial Code of 1911, now Section 1343 of revised Title 28 U.S.C.A., and upon Amendments I, V, VI, XIV and XIX to the Constitution of the United States. Jurisdiction is also allegedly based upon Section 24(1) of the Judicial Code of 1911, now revised Title 28, Section 1331, U.S.C.A. 1

The complaints at the two numbers are quite similar in substance. The International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), a voluntary unincorporated association and labor union, is a plaintiff at each number; Kawano, individually and as a member of the ILWU and as president of what was the Territorial Council of the ILWU, is a plaintiff at No. 828. The no longer existent Territorial Council of the ILWU is also named as a plaintiff at this number. Rania, in his individul capacity and as president of the United Sugar Workers, ILWU, Local 142, is a plaintiff at No. 836. Both Rania and Kawano allege, as indicated, that they sue not only individually but in representative capacities on behalf of the ILWU’s membership of approximately 30,000 persons in the Territory of Hawaii. The complaints assert that all other individual plaintiffs are residents of the Territory of Hawaii, members of the ILWU, and are daily wage earners in either the sugar industry or the pineapple industry of the Territory. This is found to be the fact. It is asserted that all the individual plaintiffs at both numbers, either ethnologically or as a matter of mores of the Islands, 2 are “members of races other than the Caucasian race”. The particulars of these allegations were either proved or stipulated to. 3 ****The races of the individual plaintiffs referred to were variously alleged, and proved or -stipulated, to be the Malayan, the Polynesian and the Mongolian, sub widely varying national strains, viz., Filipino, Hawaiian, Hawaiian-Caucasian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Puerto Rican. These facts possess significance only in relation to the challenges and motions made to the jury commissioners of the Circuit Court of the Second Circuit of the Territory of Hawaii and to the motions and challenges made to the 1947 Maui County grand jury. Most of the individual plaintiffs are alleged, and proved or stipulated to be citizens of the United States. Some of the individual plaintiffs are alleged, and proved or stipulated to be aliens and citizens of the Philippine Republic, or aliens and citizens of Japan, or aliens and citizens of other nationalities. Again we deem these facts to be of significance only *72 in relation to the attack on the jury commissioners or upon the grand jury of Maui County.

The defendants at both numbers are identical except that the defendant, Jean Lane, Chief of Police of Maui County, sued individually and as chief of police at No. 828, is not named as a defendant at No. 836. The defendant, Walter D. Acker-man, Jr., Attorney General of the Territory of Hawaii, is sued individually and as attorney general. The Honorable Ingram M. Stainback, Governor of the Territory of Hawaii, is sued individually and as governor. E. R. Bevins, County Attorney of the County of Maui, and Wendell F. Crockett, Deputy County Attorney of the County of Maui, áre sued individually and as County Attorney and Deputy County Attorney respectively. Judge Cable A. Wirtz, a Circuit Judge of the Territory of Hawaii, is sued individually and as one of the jury commissioners of Maui County. The jury commissioners and the 1947 grand jurors of the County of Maui are also sued individually and in their official capacities.

Both complaints allege mutatis mutandis that there were strikes conducted by the ILWU in the sugar and pineapple industries in the Territory; that in furtherance of the objectives of the strikes, viz., improvement in wages, hours and conditions of employment, the individual plaintiffs engaged in “lawful, peaceful and constitutionally protected activities of speech, press and assemblage and of peaceful picketing”.

The complaint at No. 828 alleges that Lane, Chief of Police of Maui County, caused the individual plaintiffs (other than Kawano) to be arrested and charged them with violations of an act of the Territory generally known as the unlawful assembly and riot statute, Revised Laws of Hawaii 1945, c. 277, Sections 11570-11584; that the plaintiffs Barbosa, Maile, Degamo, Kaopuiki, Nitta, Ah Ho, Aikala, Yagi, Arruiza, Oda and Matsuura were charged in a complaint executed before a district magistrate of Maui County with violations of the same statute; .and that the plaintiffs Makekau, Siruet, Baldua, Sipe and Mendes were similarly charged in a complaint also executed before a local magistrate. It is asserted also that the defendants Acker-man, Stainback, Bevins and Crockett have sought to present criminal charges framed on the complaints to the grand jurors of Maui County; that the defendants, Pombo and Chatterton, and Judge Wirtz, as jury commissioners, chose and composed Maui County grand juries in such a manner as to violate the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs and in violation of the laws of the United States and of the Territory of Hawaii.

The complaint goes on to recite that certain individual plaintiffs (particularly designated hereinafter) filed motions and challenges 1 to the grand jury and to the methods employed in selecting its members for the reasons set out in the complaint, to be discussed hereinafter, that these charges and challenges were heard by the Honorable Albert M. Cristy, a Circuit Judge of the Territory of Hawaii, in mid-September 1947, but that he held the motions and challenges to be without merit, refusing to disqualify or to dismiss the grand jury. The plaintiffs then allege that the unlawful assembly and riot statute is unconstitutional in that it deprives them of their rights of free speech, press and assemblage and will subject them to criminal prosecutions if they exercise their constitutional rights. Agliam, Abraham Make-kau, and thirty-four other additional plaintiffs were added as parties to the complaint by stipulation and by order of the court. It is alleged that these thirty-six individuals are held to bail under a complaint charging them also with violation of the unlawful assembly and riot statute.

The complaint closes with the prayers, inter alia, (1) that a temporary and permanent injunction issue from this court prohibiting the enforcement of the unlawful assembly and riot act against the plaintiffs and enjoining the submission to the grand jury of facts relating to the plaintiffs’ actions for indictment based on the unlawful assembly and riot act;.

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Bluebook (online)
82 F. Supp. 65, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/international-longshoremens-warehousemens-union-v-ackerman-hid-1949.