National Labor Relations Board v. Cheney California Lumber Co.
National Labor Relations Board v. Cheney California Lumber Co.
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Cheney California Lumber Company, the respondent, operated a sawmill at Greenville, California. Some employees of the Company were members of Lumber and Sawmill. Workers, Local 2647, affiliated with the AmerL can Federation of Labor. The union complained to the National Labor Relations Board that the Company had engaged in unfair labor practices, in violation- of § 8 of the Wagner Act, 49 Stat. 449, 452, 29 U. S. C. § Í58. Following the usual procedure, there was a hearing before a trial examiner who made an intermediate report, including specific recommendations for .a cease-and-desist order. The Company filed no. exceptions to this report, nor did it request an oral argument before the Board. Upon due consideration, the Board adopted the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the trial examiner. 54 N. L. R. B.
“(b) In any other manner interfering with, restraining, or coercing its employees in the exercise of the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, as guaranteed in Section 7 of the Act.”
The court found warrant for its excision of this provision in Labor Board v. Express Publishing Co., supra. That case, however, recognized that it was within the power of the Board to make an order precisely like 1 (b). It merely held that whether such an inclusive provision as 1 (b) is justified in a particular case depends upon the circumstances of the particular case before the Board. See 312 U. S. at 433, 437-38. Here the trial examiner recommended the inclusion of 1 (b) on the basis oi' his review of past hostilities by the Company against efforts at unionization; no exception was made either to the findings or to this recommendation; upon full consideration of the record the Board adopted the trial examiner’s
When judicial review is available and under what circumstances, are questions (apart from whatever requirements the Constitution may make in certain situations). that depend on the particular Congressional enactment under which judicial review is authorized. Orders of the National Labor Relations Board are enforceable by decrees of circuit courts of appeals. In such an enforcement proceeding, a court of appeals may enforce or modify or set aside the Board's order. § 10 (e), 49 Stat. 454, 29 U. S. C. § 160 (e). Since the court is ordering entry of a decree, it need not render such a decree if the Board has patently traveled outside the orbit of its authority so that there is, legally speaking, no order to enforce. But the proper scope of a Board order upon finding unfair labor practices calls for ample discretion in adapting remedy to violation. We have said that “in the nature of things Congress could not catalogue all the devices and stratagems for circumventing the policies of the Act. Nor could it define the whole gamut of remedies to effectuate these policies in an infinite variety of specific situations. Congress met these difficulties by leaving the adaptation* of means to end to the empiric process of administration. The exercise of the process was committed to the Board, subject to limited judicial review.” Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board, 313 U. S. 177, 194.
A limitation which Congress has placed upon the power of courts to review orders of the Labor Board is decisive of this case. Section 10 (e) of the Act commands that “No objection that has not been urged before the Board, its member, agent or agency, shall be considered by the court, unless the failure or neglect to urge such objection shall be excused because of extraordinary circumstances.” We have heretofore had occasion to respect this explicit direction of Congress. Marshall Field & Co. v. Labor
Judgment reversed.
Concurring Opinion
concurring.
I concur on a ground which the Court’s opinion points out and which is alone sufficient to sustain its decision,
The prohibition by § 10 (e) of the court’s consideration of objections which the parties did not urge before the Board is a limitation upon the court’s review of the grounds for granting or denying relief. This Court has treated it as such. See Marshall Field & Co. v. Labor Board, 318 U. S. 253. But we have not held that § 10 (e) could, and I think it cannot rightly, be construed to be also a limitation on the court’s power to conform its own process to accepted legal standards applied to the “entire record” which § 10 (e) requires to be filed with it. Nor is that, prohibition a command to the court to act as a mere ministerial agency to execute the order of the Board, without regard to those standards which control the court’s use of its own process, even though the Board and the parties have ignored them.
Only recently we have held that the imposition of a mandatory duty on. a federal court of equity to restrain violations of a statute is not to be taken as depriving the court of its traditional power to administer its remedies according to its own governing principles and in conformity to the standards of public interest. See Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 331. In that case we held that a command explicitly addressed to a court of equity,
It should likewise be held that the present statute does not alter the power of a court of equity to frame its injunction according to equitable principles applied in the light of the record on which it must act. Here the statute is not mandatory. It does not purport to curtail the court’s power to define the scope of its process. The section only confers on the court the power to make “a decree enforcing, modifying, arid enforcing as so modified, or setting aside in whole or in part the order of the Board.” This emphasizes what was implicit in the statute involved in the Hecht case, and made explicit by the opinion, that when a statute authorizes an appeal to equity to enforce a liability created by statute, the exercise is invoked of those powers which pertain to it as a court of equity. This at least includes the power to fix, on its own motion, the scope of the decree which it may be required to enforce by contempt proceedings, in conformity to recognized equitable standards applied to the record before it.
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