union picketing of store selling nonunion produce
How later courts described this case
- union picketing of store selling nonunion produce
- industry in a labor dispute
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Braucher, J.
(concurring). I join fully in the opinion and decision of the court. But I think additional comment is required about injunctions issued by judges who have no jurisdiction to issue them. For more than six months the UFW and its sympathizers have been commanded to refrain from peacefully communicating the facts of a labor dispute to the plaintiffs’ customers. To be sure, counsel for the UFW apparently did not even recognize the problem, but the injunctions were continued in effect after it had been adjudicated that there was no jurisdiction to issue them.
The old-fashioned labor injunction purported to preserve the existing situation until there could be a proper trial of the merits of a claim that concerted activities of employees and their sympathizers had somehow violated the legal rights of their employers and the public. In practice, there was usually no proper trial of the merits. Long before the time for trial, the case was usually moot, since with the help of the preliminary injunction the employers had won in the world outside the court room. In effect, the courts were cavalry in the employer army.
Employees are more numerous than employers, and the remedy in a democratic system was obvious. Long ago, the battle was fought out in the political arena, and the forces of organized labor won, to the great advantage of our system of justice. In my view, as the opinion of the court fully demonstrates, this is not a marginal case. The product boycott has long been a familiar feature of the labor scene, and injunctions against it were standard illustrations of the old-fashioned labor injunction. I had thought the practice of enjoining such boycotts in labor disputes had been abolished a *744 generation ago, to general public satisfaction.
Even if this case could be treated as a marginal example of a labor dispute, the injunction practice followed here is nevertheless wrong. Even apart from statutes restricting labor injunctions, there is here a serious issue under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Injunctions should be issued with the expectation that they will be obeyed and, if necessary, enforced by contempt proceedings. Apparently there would have been no objection to an injunction limited to acts of harassment or intimidation; the issuance of more sweeping injunctions opened up the possibility that they might be unenforceable by reason of unconstitutional overbreadth. That risk should at least have been postponed until after trial on the merits.
In my opinion the injunctions in this case should never have been issued.