Knapp-Monarch Co. v. Anderson

7 F. Supp. 332, 1934 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1607
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Illinois
DecidedMay 28, 1934
Docket674
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 7 F. Supp. 332 (Knapp-Monarch Co. v. Anderson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Knapp-Monarch Co. v. Anderson, 7 F. Supp. 332, 1934 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1607 (illinoised 1934).

Opinion

WHAM, District Judge.

This is a suit in equity wherein the plaintiff seeks injunctive relief against the defendants with whom the plaintiff is engaged in a labor dispute. The defendants are employees or former employees of the plaintiff, and are now on strike. The plaintiff is a corporation, organized under the laws of the state of Missouri, and operates in Belleville, Ill., a plant for the manufacture of electrical appliances. It employs approximately 559 workers. The defendants are residents of the state of Illinois.

Jurisdiction of the cause exists by reason of diversity of citizenship of plaintiff and defendants subject to the restrictions on such jurisdiction imposed by chapter 6-, title 29, USCA (section 101 et seq.), known and sometimes referred to herein as the Norris Act.

The pertinent facts shown by the evidence are, in substance, as follows:

There has been a controversy over a period of several months between the plaintiff and the members of a labor union local to the plant known as Federal Labor Union No. 18274. This controversy, has been taken by the parties before all available bodies-for mediation, arbitration, or settlement, and every reasonable effort has been made by plaintiff to settle the dispute.

On Friday night, April 13, 19'34, while the dispute was still pending before the St. Louis Regional Labor Board, and without notice to the plaintiff or its officials, the strike was called at a special meeting of said Local No. 18274. Since that time the members of said Regional Labor Board have personally intervened in an effort to bring about an amicable adjustment of the controversy but without success. Other serious but unsuccessful efforts have been made by the plaintiff to reach an agreement with the striking employees.

At said meeting of Local 18274, attended by approximately 2i00' of its approximately 300' members, the strike was voted to begin the next morning, and the members were instructed to report at the plant of plaintiff to do peaceful picketing without violence. Pursuant to said action on the part of the union, the plant was picketed on the morning of April 14, 1934, by a large number of the members of said union, including many of the defendants.

On Monday morning, April 16, the number of picketers had grown to a large assemblage of 250 or more, blocking the sidewalks, swarming over the roads and about the entrances to the plant. This continued throughout the day until the last of the workers had left the plant and in deereasing numbers on into the night and beyond 12 p. m.

Numerous acts of violence and intimidation occurred on Monday, increasing in fre-quence as the day progressed, and on Monday night, fearing further and increased violence the next day, the officials of the plant determined not to operate the plant on Tuesday. Notice of this action was sent out to the workers, but some failed to get the word and returned to the plant on Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday before the usual time for opening the plant large numbers of the striking employees were back at their job of what they termed and most of them, despite the violence of the day before, apparently believed was peaceful picketing. Soon a crowd similar in size to that of the day before was present. Employees who were not on strike and who had not received word that the plant would not reopen began to arrive, as did the usual traffic carrying materials, supplies, and food ordinarily used at the plant in the course of a working day. Again the striking employees blocked sidewalks, swarmed over the streets and about the entrances to the plant. Again acts of violence and intimidation occurred of a nature which confirmed the wisdom of the management in their decision to cease operations in order to avoid danger of violence to the employees ■who wished to and were willing to work.

On each day following Tuesday, April 17, until the date of the temporary restraining order herein, the picketing of the plant continued in large though decreasing • numbers. In the meantime the plant was kept closed.

*334 The evidence bore particularly upon the happenings in connection with the strike on the first three days, excluding Sunday. The conclusion that much violence and many acts of intimidation occurred on those days toward the employees who worked or wished to work is unavoidable. Without analyzing the evidence in detail, it will be sufficient for the purpose of this memorandum to point out the more pronounced instances of violence and intimidation.

The large crowd that was gathered about the plant on Monday morning while not more disorderly on the whole than such large assemblage of pieketers bent on winning their strike are apt to be, were shouting, calling names, blocking the walks to the entrances, compelling workers going to the plant to go into the streets for a passageway. There the pieketers gathered about them, following and urging them not to go back to work but to support the strike. In some instances, workers were told that they could, go into the plant, but they would have to take the consequences when they came out at the end of the day. At times it became necessary for the management and officers of the law to aid in getting the workers safely into the plant. The pieketers stopped trucks'and cars going into the plant, 'gathering about them in large numbers, talking to the drivers and occupants sometimes persuasively, sometimes coercively. At times they packed themselves about the entrances, and the officers found it necessary to open the way for vehicles and workers entering the plant. Air was let out of the tires of workers’ cars that were left on the outside of the plant.

The crowd of pieketers was large on Monday afternoon when workers were leaVing the plant, and the threats of the morning bid so fair to be made good that it became necessary to convey many of the workers away under guard. Certain of the cars carrying the workers were stoned, others were threatened, others were pursued in a dangerous and threatening manner by cars containing piek-eters. In certain instances when the workers left the cars in which they were conveyed from the plant they were set upon and assaulted or followed and threatened.

On Tuesday, with a crowd present similar to the day before though the plant did not open, further acts of violence and coercion occurred similar to those of the day before and calculated to intimidate those who would work and by duress rather than by peaceful persuasion prevent them from working.

Several of the individuals who are named as defendants actually committed or had an active part in the acts of violence, coercion, and duress mentioned above. Many of the others, pursuant to the plan formulated at the special meeting of the union on the night of April 13, were present and participating in the mass picketing when the acts of violence and intimidation occurred, and after-wards continued to participate in the mass picketing though they knew of, or had learned of, such acts of violence and coercion.

The overt acts of violence and intimidation were chiefly directed by the striking employees at the workers in the plant with obvious purpose to compel the closing of the plant by depriving it of the employees necessary to operate or by coercing the management into closing the plant in order to avoid danger to those who would work.

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Bluebook (online)
7 F. Supp. 332, 1934 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1607, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/knapp-monarch-co-v-anderson-illinoised-1934.