Mitchell v. Gibbons

172 F.2d 970, 23 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2450, 1949 U.S. App. LEXIS 4472, 1949 Trade Cas. (CCH) 62,388
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedMarch 7, 1949
DocketNo. 13820
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 172 F.2d 970 (Mitchell v. Gibbons) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mitchell v. Gibbons, 172 F.2d 970, 23 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2450, 1949 U.S. App. LEXIS 4472, 1949 Trade Cas. (CCH) 62,388 (8th Cir. 1949).

Opinion

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge.

This appeal is taken to reverse the decree of the District Court which dismissed the plaintiff’s action with costs for want of jurisdiction appearing on the face of his amended complaint. The action was brought against C. I. O. local and national labor unions, officers and agents to enjoin them from continuing conspiracy to molest or interfere with the peaceful conduct of plaintiff’s taxicab business in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, which plaintiff carried on under a franchise granted to him by the City. The business included transportation of occasional passengers in interstate commerce from St. Louis, Missouri, to East St. Lotvis, Illinois, and jurisdiction in the federal court was asserted on the ground that the alleged conspiracy of the defendants constituted violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1-7 inclusive, 15 note, as amended by the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 12-27 inclusive and Section 44, and that jurisdiction to enjoin its continuance was vested in the federal court by the provisions of said Acts and of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C.A. § 41, new Title 28 U.S.C.A. §§ 1331, 1336. The suffificiency of the amount in controversy was alleged and that irreparable damage was threatened for which there was no adequate remedy at law.

The defendants’ motion to dismiss was on the ground, i. a., that the allegations of plaintiffs amended complaint presented [972]*972only a labor dispute existing between plaintiff and defendants and acts growing out of such labor dispute and a suit for injunction governed by the restrictions upon the power of federal judges to grant injunctions imposed by the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 101 et seq., Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et -seq. It was not claimed in the District court, and is not contended -here, that plaintiffs amended complaint stated a case for injunction within the restrictions of said Acts.

The lengthy amended complaint 'includes allegations to the effect that the plaintiff under the franchise granted to him to operate taxicabs for hire is engaged in the taxicab business as a cárrier of passengers for hire and operates some thirty taxicabs of the value of $51,000 in carrying on the business, with storage facilities maintained therefor. ' The defendants are and have been attempting to unionize plaintiffs taxi drivers and to effect their object have resorted to threats, intimidation and violence towards said drivers and destruction of the property in their charge and threaten to and will, unless restrained, continue such unlawful conduct until plaintiff’s business is destroyed. Particular instances of violence are set forth ascribed to the defendants generally and alleged to have been perpetrated in pursuance of and to effect the object of the conspiracy .sought to be enjoined. The only fair inference from these allegations is that defendants’ common object is simply to organize the plaintiff’s taxidrivers in a labor union and that the plaintiff opposes and resists and there exists a labor dispute between plaintiff and defendants and controversies growing out of it where no injunction could be granted by the federal court except as restricted by the Norris-LaGuardia and Taftllartley Acts.

But the amended complaint also contains allegations to the effect that the plaintiff in carrying on his taxicab business does not pay wages to the men who drive the cabs. He gets the work done by them and they get their compensation for their work under a plan of leasing the cabs to individual drivers who earn the- difference between fares collected from passengers and the charges which plaintiff requires them to pay. The drivers work within the area of plaintiff’s franchise without being restricted to districts and pick up passengers when and where they can and there is no immediate supervision over them as they make their various trips, and it is alleged as conclusion that the plaintiff is not the employer of the drivers and they are not his employees but that each of them is an independent contractor and therefore the controversies between the parties here do not grow out of a labor dispute. Plaintiff contended in the District court and now contends that instead of a labor dispute the defendants’ concert of intent and action should be deemed a conspiracy to directly restrain and prevent the intrastate and interstate commerce in violation of the Sherman Act as amended and outside the scope of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.

We do not find facts stated in the complaint to support such holding. It is not -shown how many men- are required or engaged in driving the thirty taxicabs used in plaintiff’s business, nor are any of the details of management and supervision qf said business set forth, but clear allegations of the amended complaint establish that plaintiff’s taxicab business for which he seeks protection by injunction is an integral unit of capital investment, management, supervision and labor carried on by him, and the cab drivers earn their living out of it solely by their labor — they perform the work of driving the taxicabs. That work is the same work comrrfonly done in the same way as the work done for a living by all chauffeur members of defendant labor unions. They have no part in the capital investment nor in the management or control of the business. The plaintiff, as he alleges in the complaint, “operates the taxicabs” and the drivers are the hands or performers of work whose relations with plaintiff a-s to working conditions, compensation and self-organization are directly within the purview of the labor -relations laws. Defendants’ attempt to organize them and plaintiff’s resistance result in the existence of a labor dispute.

Plaintiff has stressed the case of Columbia River Packers Ass’n v. Hinton, 315 U. [973]*973S. 143, 62 S.Ct. 520, 521, 86 L.Ed. 750, as supporting a contrary conclusion. We think it does not. It was there asserted that what the court found to be “a dispute among business men over the terms of a contract for the sale of fish” was “a labor dispute” and the court decided that it was not. No such situation can be drawn from plaintiff’s allegations in this case. Only one business is pictured and sought to be protected here and that business is carried on by the plaintiff. He can only carry it on with the labor of his taxi drivers, and the labor of human beings is not a commodity or article of commerce. The dispute is solely and entirely as to the terms and conditions on which the drivers shall work, the initial particular being the matter of union organization which has given rise to the suit for injunction. Appellant contends that although such holding may have been proper under the decision of the Supreme Court in N. L. R. B. v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111, 64 S.Ct. 851, 88 L.Ed. 1170, and that such “is the effect of the Plearst case”, nevertheless a contrary ruling is required under the provisions of the TaftIlartley Act of 1947 amendatory of the Wagner Act in Title 29 U.S.C.A. § 152(9)1 and Section 152(3). 2 But the amendments relied on do not justify refusal to apply the law to the facts pleaded here in accordance with the Supreme Court decisions in the Hearst case. The case was decided by the Supreme Court in full recognition of the principle that the relationship of employer-employee differs from that of independent contractors, and the conclusion there that a labor dispute existed upon facts analogous in principle to those here presented is binding on this court.

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Bluebook (online)
172 F.2d 970, 23 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2450, 1949 U.S. App. LEXIS 4472, 1949 Trade Cas. (CCH) 62,388, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mitchell-v-gibbons-ca8-1949.