SKF Industries, Inc. v. Local No. 2898 United Steelworkers of America

56 Pa. D. & C. 149, 1945 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 7
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County
DecidedNovember 29, 1945
Docketno. 2306
StatusPublished

This text of 56 Pa. D. & C. 149 (SKF Industries, Inc. v. Local No. 2898 United Steelworkers of America) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
SKF Industries, Inc. v. Local No. 2898 United Steelworkers of America, 56 Pa. D. & C. 149, 1945 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 7 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1945).

Opinion

Smith, P. J.,

The SKF Industries, Inc., a Delaware corporation, registered to do business in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and having manufacturing plants no. 1 at Front Street and Erie Avenue and no. 2 at Kennedy and Tulip [150]*150Streets in the City of Philadelphia, where they manufacture and sell ball and roller bearings, are engaged in a labor dispute with Local No. 2898, United Steel Workers of America, Congress for Industrial Organizations, an unincorporated association which is composed of wage employes of the SKF Industries, Incororated, and individuals Stephen Root, president of said local; Joseph P. Cannon, vice president; Gerald P. Kennedy, financial secretary; Helen Hawes, treasurer; George Hart, recording secretary; L. Barth, chairman of grievance committee, and Bernard Lehman, secretary of grievance committee, all officers' of the said local. As the result of said labor dispute, the wage employes of the SKF Industries, Inc., all members of the said local, have discontinued their work and have gone on a strike. Plaintiff, SKF Industries, Inc., has filed in this court sitting in chancery, a bill in equity, asking for an injunction preliminary until final hearing and perpetual thereafter to restrain and enjoin defendants individually and as representatives of the members of Local Union No. 2898, United Steel Workers of America, C. I. O., their servants, agents, employes and/or any other person acting on behalf of them or any of them, from aiding, abetting, encouraging, ordering or assisting in any way any work stoppage at plaintiff’s plants by means of violence, and from any interference by means of mass picketing with the operation of plaintiff’s office and factories, and from coercing or intimidating by threats and violence, plaintiff’s employes and other persons having lawful business upon plaintiff’s premises and from entering plaintiff’s premises.

Findings of fact

1. The SKF Industries, Inc., a Delaware corporation, registered to do business in the State of Pennsylvania, has manufacturing plants at Front Street and Erie Avenue, being plant no. 1; Tulip and Kennedy [151]*151Streets, being plant no. 2, and Fourth Street and Glen-wood Avenue, all in the City of Philadelphia.

2. Stephen Root, Joseph P. Cannon, Gerald P. Kennedy, Helen Hawes, George Hart, L. Barth and Bernard Lehman are officers and members of Local No. 2898, United Steel Workers of America, C. I. O.

3. The SKF Industries, Inc., and Local No. 2898, United Steel Workers of America, C. I. O., and the individuals, Stephen Root, Joseph P. Cannon, Gerald P. Kennedy, Helen Hawes, George Hart, L. Barth and Bernard Lehman, are engaged in a labor dispute.

4. Said defendants individually and as representatives of the members of the Local No. 2898, their fellow members, as a result of the said labor dispute, have caused to assemble around and about the entrances of the said plants nos. 1 and 2 of plaintiff, large groups of men so congregating as to prevent the orderly entrance of plaintiff’s other employes, officers of plaintiff company, and other persons having lawful business upon plaintiff’s premises.

5. Said defendants, their said servants, agents and employes and other persons acting on behalf of them or any of them, are engaged in mass picketing around and about the plants of said plaintiff.

6. By their large numbers they are coercing and intimidating the officers of plaintiff company, plaintiff’s employes and other persons having lawful business upon plaintiff’s premises, from entering and leaving said premises.

Discussion

The question here involved is not whether there is a labor dispute. It may be conceded that there is. The proposition which confronts us is whether the court of equity may restrain mass picketing and acts of intimidation, coercion, threats and violence if indulged in by defendants while the labor dispute exists. It is the opinion of this court that the Labor Anti-Injunction [152]*152Act of June 2, 1937, P. L. 1198, is not controlling in this type of case and does not take it out of the juris-dicton of the courts of equity as vested by the Act of June 16, 1836, P. L. 784, sec. 13, and the Act of February 14, 1857, P. L. 39, insofar as they relate, inter alia, to the prevention or restraint of the commission or continuance of acts contrary to law and prejudicial to the interests of the community or the rights of individuals. As was said by Mr. Justice Stern in Main Cleaners & Dyers, Inc., v. Columbia Super Cleaners, Inc., et al., 332 Pa. 71, 75 (1938) :

“There is thus established a general class of cases iri which the court is vested with jurisdicton to grant in-junctive relief. The fact that a labor dispute may be involved does not take the litigaton out of this jurisdictional class. All that the Act of June 2, 1937, P. L. 1198, in effect provides is that, in any case involving or growing out of a labor dispute, the court shall not have the power to issue injunctions to prohibit the particular acts specified in sections 6 and 7.”

A reading of section 6 shows clearly the intention of the legislature by the qualifying words “peaceably”, “lawful” and “not involving misrepresentation, fraud, duress, violence, breach of the peace”, etc. The legislature shows the specific intent to prohibit injunctions from restraining peaceful picketing of an employer’s plant. “The modern trend of judicial decisions clearly indicates that, the right to picket peacefully and truthfully is one of organized labor’s lawful means of advertising its grievances to the public.”: Reed’s Law of Labor Relations, p. 271.

In discussing the Clayton Act which has been followed in many of the various States having anti-injunction legislation, Bourquin, J., in Great Northern Railway Co. v. Local Great Falls Lodge of International Association of Machinists, No. 287, et al., 283 Fed. 557, 562, said:

[153]*153“The principal thing is that workmen conscientiously heed the mandate of the law and its instruments (the courts) that threats and force and their intimidation must not be used to promote success in strikes, and that of necessity, theirs as well as others, such methods always have been and always will be under the ban and criminal.”

In Truax et al. v. Corrigan et al., 257 U. S. 312, Mr. Chief Justice Taft, in considering an anti-injunction act of Arizona, which prohibited the court from enjoining peaceful picketing said (p. 327) :

“Plaintiff’s business is a property right (Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443, 465) and free access for employes, owner and customers to his place of business is incident to such right. Intentional injury caused to either right or both by a conspiracy is a tort.”

The question considered was whether the means used were unlawful. As was said by Chief Justice Taft (p. 332) :

“Our whole system of law is predicated on the general, fundamental principle of equality of application of the law. ‘All men are equal before the law’, ‘This is a government of laws and not of men’, ‘No man is above the law’, are all maxims showing the spirit in which legislatures, executives and courts are expected to make, execute and apply laws.”

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Related

Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering
254 U.S. 443 (Supreme Court, 1921)
Truax v. Corrigan
257 U.S. 312 (Supreme Court, 1921)
Jefferson & Indiana Coal Co. v. Marks
134 A. 430 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1926)
Main Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. Columbia Super Cleaners, Inc.
2 A.2d 750 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1938)
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19 A.2d 152 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1940)
Murdock, Kerr & Co. v. Walker
25 A. 492 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1893)
O'Neil v. Behanna
38 L.R.A. 382 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1897)

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Bluebook (online)
56 Pa. D. & C. 149, 1945 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 7, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/skf-industries-inc-v-local-no-2898-united-steelworkers-of-america-pactcomplphilad-1945.