Marine Cooks & Stewards v. Panama Steamship Co.
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The respondents, who are the owner, time charterer, and master of the Liberian registered vessel, S. S. Nikolos, brought this action in a United States District Court against the petitioner union and its members praying for
“That no court of the United States, as herein defined, shall have jurisdiction to issue any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction in a case involving or growing out of a labor dispute, except in a strict conformity with the provisions of this Act; nor shall any such restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction be issued contrary to the public policy declared in this Act.”1
Section 4 of that same law specifically denies jurisdiction to District Courts to issue any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction to prohibit unions from:
“(e)' Giving publicity to the existence of, or the facts involved in, any labor dispute, whether by advertising, speaking, patrolling, or by any other method not involving fraud or violence . ...”2
Notwithstanding these provisions of the Norris-La-Guardia Act and despite an express finding that the union and its members had not been guilty of fraud, and had not threatened or committed any acts of physical violence to any person or any property, the District Court issued a
The petitioner and other national labor organizations act as bargaining representatives for most of the unlicensed personnel of vessels that fly the American flag on the Pacific Coast. Petitioner alone, pursuant to National Labor Relations Board certification, represents employees of the stewards’ department on a large majority of those vessels. The S. S. Nikolos is owned by a Liberian corporation, was time-chartered for this trip by another Liberian corporation, and all members of its crew were aliens working under employment contracts made outside this country. There was no labor dispute between the ship’s employees and the ship. The Nikolos picked up a cargo of salt in Mexico and carried it to the harbor of the port of Tacoma, Washington, for delivery to an American consignee there. After the ship entered the Tacoma harbor it was met by the union’s boat which began to circle around the Nikolos displaying signs marked
On appeal from the temporary injunction to the Court of Appeals the petitioner argued that the injunction granted by the District Court was beyond the jurisdiction of that court because of the provisions of § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act previously set out,
The Benz case was decided by a United States District Court sitting as a state court to enforce state law under its diversity jurisdiction. The question in the Benz case was whether the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 governed the internal labor relations of a foreign ship and its foreign workers under contracts made abroad while that ship happened temporarily to be in American waters. The Benz case decided that the Labor Management Relations Act had no such scope or coverage and that it accordingly did not pre-empt the labor relations field so as to bar an action for damages for unlawful picketing under Oregon law. Nothing was said or intimated in Benz that would justify an inference that because a United States District Court has power to award damages in state cases growing out of labor disputes it also has power to issue injunctions in like situations. That question — of United States courts' jurisdiction to issue injunctions in cases like this — is to be controlled by the Norris-LaGuardia Act.
That Act’s language is broad. The language is broad because Congress was intent upon taking the federal courts out of the labor injunction business except in the very limited circumstances left open for federal jurisdiction under the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The history and background that led Congress to take this view have been adverted to in a number of prior opinions of this Court in which we refused to give the Act narrow interpretations that would have restored many labor dispute controversies to the courts.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded to the District Court with directions to dismiss the petition for injunction.
It is so ordered.
47 Stat. 70, 29 U. S. C. §101.
47 Stat. 70, 71; 29 U. S. C. § 104. Even in "the limited jurisdiction the Norris-LaGuardia Act leaves to federal courts in labor controversies, other sections of the Act narrowly circumscribe the cases where, the parties against whom, and the circumstances in which, injunctions may issue. If, however, issuance of a specific injunction is prohibited by one section, such as § 4, compliance with the requirements of another section, such as § 7, does not justify the injunction.
Panama Steamship Co. v. Marine Cooks & Stewards, AFL, 1959 Am. Mar. Cas. 340.
1959 Am. Mar. Cas. 340, 350.
In the District Court respondents rested their claim for jurisdiction on 28 U. S. C. § 1331 which provides:
“The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions wherein the matter in controversy . . . arises under the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States.”
Between the time the District Court’s injunction was appealed and the time the Court of Appeals decided the appeal, this Court decided Romero v. International Term. Over. Co., 358 U. S. 354. That case decided that § 1331 does “not extend, and could not reasonably be interpreted to extend, to cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction.” Id., at 378. In the Court of Appeals the petitioner here broadened its challenge to the jurisdiction of the District Court in this case by invoking the interpretation of § 1331 declared in the Romero case. The view we take of the challenge to the court’s jurisdiction under the Norris-LaGuardia Act makes it unnecessary for us to determine the entirely separate question raised under the Romero case.
Marine Cooks & Stewards, AFL, v. Panama Steamship Co., 265 F. 2d 780 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1959).
See, e. g., United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219; Milk Wagon Drivers’ Union v. Lake Valley Farm Products, 311 U. S. 91; New
“The underlying aim of the Norris-LaGuardia Act was to restore the broad purpose which Congress thought it had formulated in the Clayton Act but which was frustrated, so Congress believed, by unduly restrictive judicial construction.” United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219, 235-236.
This congressional purpose, as is well known, was prompted by a desire to protect the rights of laboring men to organize and bargain collectively and to withdraw federal courts from a type of controversy for which many believed they were ill-suited and from participation in which, it was feared, judicial prestige might suffer. See Frankfurter and Greene, The Labor Injunction (1930), at 200; Gregory, Labor and the Law (1958), at 184-199.
Section 13 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U. S. C. § 113 (c), defines a labor dispute, for purposes of that Act, as follows: “The term 'labor dispute' includes any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment, or concerning the association or representation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing, or seeking to arrange terms or conditions of employment, regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.” (Emphasis supplied.)
47 Stat. 70, 73 ; 29 U. S. C. § 113 (a).
See note 8, supra.
1959 Am. Mar. Cas. 340, 350.
Unlike the situation in the Benz ease, in which American unions to which the foreign seamen did not belong picketed the foreign ship in sympathy with the strike of the foreign seamen aboard, the union members here were not interested in the internal economy of the ship, but rather were interested in preserving job opportunities for themselves in this country. They were picketing on their own behalf, not on behalf of the foreign employees as in Benz. Though the employer here was foreign, the dispute was domestic. For a thoughtful discussion of the impact of foreign employment upon American labor standards, see Afran Transport Co. v. National Maritime Union, 169 F. Supp. 416, 1959 Am. Mar. Cas. 326 (holding that the Norris-LaGuardia Act withdrew from Federal District Courts juris
Benz v. Compania Naviera Hidalgo, 353 U. S. 138, 142. See generally, Comment, The Effect of United States Labor Legislation on the Flag-of-Convenience Fleet: Regulation of Shipboard Labor Relations and Remedies Against Shoreside Picketing, 69 Yale L. J. 498, 516-525, esp. 523-525.
Here respondents do not even claim that foreign ships seeking injunctions can obtain them without complying with the requirement of § 7 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act that the court hold a hearing and make specified findings.
Dissenting Opinion
believing that the controversy in this case does not constitute a lawful “labor dispute” within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, see his dissenting opinion in Order of Railroad Telegraphers v. Chicago & North Western R. Co., ante, p. 345, dissents.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- MARINE COOKS & STEWARDS, AFL, Et Al. v. PANAMA STEAMSHIP CO., LTD., Et Al.
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- 153 cases
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- Published