Richman Bros. v. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

116 N.E.2d 60, 65 Ohio Law. Abs. 273, 51 Ohio Op. 145, 32 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2065, 1953 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 383
CourtCuyahoga County Common Pleas Court
DecidedApril 14, 1953
DocketNo. 641936
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 116 N.E.2d 60 (Richman Bros. v. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Richman Bros. v. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 116 N.E.2d 60, 65 Ohio Law. Abs. 273, 51 Ohio Op. 145, 32 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2065, 1953 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 383 (Ohio Super. Ct. 1953).

Opinion

OPINION

By CONNELL, J.

This matter-came before the Court on the motion of the [274]*274plaintiff for a temporary injunction against various defendants. For expediency, we will herein call plaintiff, The Rich-man Brothers Company, — the Company; we will call the defendant, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, along with various other Amalgamated associations, officers, and members of Amalgamated Unions — the Amalgamated.

This cause has had a procedural history worthy of mention, before discussing the matter before this court. The activities of which the Company here complains against the Amalgamated began in March, of 1951. Plaintiff filed its petition for permanent injunction and equitable relief against Amalgamated on October 18, 1952, along with the within motion for a temporary injunction. Amalgamated had the cause removed to the U. S. District Court shortly thereafter, on the ground that only that Court had jurisdiction. The Federal Court, in an excellent opinion rendered by Judge Charles J. McNamee, remanded the case back to this court on January 7, 1953, on the ground the Federal Court had no jurisdiction. Amalgamated applied for re-hearing in Federal Court and was overruled, a second time by Judge McNamee.

This cause was then set for hearing before the Common Pleas Court herein for March 24, 1953. On January 28, 1953, defendants filed a motion to dismiss in the Court of Common Pleas on the ground that the Court of Common Pleas had no jurisdiction in the matter on the theory that Congress has “pre-empted” the right of any State, or any State court to take jurisdiction of this kind of action, and on March 12, 1953 this court overruled such motion to dismiss, treating it as a demurrer to the petition on the ground that this court did not have jurisdiction of the subject of the action. Defendants then applied to Federal Court on March 23, 1953 in an effort to stay the hearing set in Common Pleas Court for March 24, 1953 on the ground that only the Federal Court had jurisdiction of the action and defendants were again overruled by Judge McNamee. On March 24, 1953 hearing began before us, on the within matter. The above references concerning these procedural matters will explain the seeming delay of this court in finally commencing hearings on March 24, 1953, on a motion of plaintiff for temporary injunction which had been filed five months before, to wit, October 18, 1952.

In accordance with §11890 GC, this matter was submitted, on affidavits by both sides, along with the oral testimony of defendant, Beryl Peppercorn, who is the manager of the Cleveland Joint Board of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Peppercorn testified that he is in general respon[275]*275sible in northeastern Ohio, for the activities of various defendants, with which we are here concerned. Beryl Peppercorn has been prominently identified with the work of the Amalgamated in this area for many years and he testified that over a period of many years he had often gone to the vicinity of the Richman Brothers Plant on East 55th Street, in the city of Cleveland, for the purpose of distributing literature to the employees of the plant as they left same; that over the years he had had no success in attempting to organize the employes of the Company, and he expressed it as his opinion that the company was preventing his success in his endeavor.

He testified that he had some employes of the company in his union but refused to say how many; he stated that he had not informed the company of such fact; he stated that there is no dispute between the company and the union, and that all of the activities in which these defendants have engaged and with which we will be herein concerned are for “advertising purposes” only.

He testified that he had heard that at some Company gathering a Mr. Richman had at some past time said that “Richman would never have a Union.” The Court considers such testimony as being hearsay and having no probative value.

Peppersorn testified that some time in the month of March, 1951, he wrote a letter to Mr. Richman, president of the Company, suggesting that they have a conference. Prior to that he said he had never met the management at any time in his life; that this was his very first effort at a conference with them. One or two days later he received a letter from Mr. Richman’s secretary advising him that Mr. Richman was then out of town, and that after his return, in a matter of three or four days, Richman would contact him. Immediately, and with no further legal justification than is here outlined, and before the three or four days mentioned had elapsed, the Amalgamated put picket lines, not on the Richman plant on 55th Street where some 1400 employees whose unionization was desired by the Amalgamated performed their task of making clothes, but on approximately seventy stores throughout the entire length and breadth of the United States, at which the company sold its merchandize, which seventy stores, including three in the city of Cleveland have been bannered and picketed continuously for a period of over two years ever since, on only that provocation herein mentioned.

Thus it is apparent that the activities of the Amalgamated as hereinafter described, and which have continued for over two years and up to date, are without any legal justification [276]*276whatever, unless they can be said to come under its privilege of free speech or advertising, as it claims.

It is perfectly apparent that when Peppercorn, after having waited two decades to win employees, and having utterly failed of their unionization, then wrote the company for the first time, but refused to wait two days for Richman’s return to Cleveland to confer with him, he was trying altogether too hard to create that provocation which in his judgment would justify the economic war which he had so well prepared in advance, and which he immediately set into action.

In addition to picketing such seventy stores for such two year period, the voluminous file of affidavits herein indicate that demonstrations have been held at various stores at various times, two of which were held in the city of Cleveland, in which parades of workers, parades of men from the headquarters of the Amalgamated, carrying banners and baloons, have marched to the store fronts of Richman’s and made what they considered demonstrations before the same, photographs of which are included in the record as appended to affidavits, and the same has happened in many cities throughout the country. The record is replete with various types of interference on the part of the pickets with prospective customers, it is replete with incidents of prospective customers “unwilling to cross a picket line”; of union mechanics called to service the stores and buildings “unwilling to pass a picket-line,” of truck-drivers about to deliver or about to accept their shipments “unwilling to pass a picket-line.” In fact, the great accomplishment of all the activities of the Amalgamated herein described, has been in the number of prospective customers, union mechanics and drivers who refused to cross “the picket-line,” whereas Peppercorn was the first in this hearing to state that it was not at all a picket-line. The Amalgamated claims it is all advertising. The Amalgamated has herein filed affidavits to the effect that they instructed their pickets not to interfere with such customers, or mechanics or drivers, and say they had no knowledge of such interference if, in fact, it took place.

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Related

Richman Bros. v. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
71 Ohio Law. Abs. 561 (Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, 1955)
Arkansas Oak Flooring Co. v. United Mine Workers of America
81 So. 2d 413 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1955)
Amalgamated Clothing Workers v. Richman Bros.
348 U.S. 511 (Supreme Court, 1955)

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Bluebook (online)
116 N.E.2d 60, 65 Ohio Law. Abs. 273, 51 Ohio Op. 145, 32 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2065, 1953 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 383, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/richman-bros-v-amalgamated-clothing-workers-of-america-ohctcomplcuyaho-1953.