Opinion
Nos. 35428 and 35432
Decided July 2, 1958.
Labor unions — National Labor Relations Act — Unfair labor practices by union — Wrongful interference with right to work — Common-law tort action for damages — Jurisdiction of state courts.
APPEALS from the Court of Appeals for Mahoning County.
The appellant, Perko, brought two actions in the Court of Common Pleas to recover money damages for alleged wrongful interference with his right to work. In one action, Local No. 207 of International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers Union, an unincorporated labor organization of which he was a member, and five individuals, officials of the union, were named defendants. In the other action, the same five named individuals were made defendants, but the union was not.
The material allegations of the petitions in the two actions are practically the same. Plaintiff alleges that for several years he was a member of the defendant union, classified as a foreman and employed as such by the William B. Pollock Company; that defendants, without justification, conspired to deprive plaintiff of his right to continue to work as foreman for the William B. Pollock Company and as foreman for any other company in the geographic jurisdiction of Local No. 207, by suspending his foreman's rights, by demanding that the Pollock company discharge plaintiff as superintendent and foreman and by instituting a strike against the Pollock company for the sole purpose of coercing the company to discharge him; that in consequence thereof plaintiff was discharged; and that defendants have prevented plaintiff from procuring employment as a foreman. The prayers are for money judgments for loss of earnings against defendants and each of them.
In each case the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the petition for the reason that the court does not have jurisdiction over the subject matter of the cause of action.
Without hearing any evidence, the trial court in each case sustained the motion and dismissed the petition.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgments.
The causes are in this court for review, a motion to certify the record in each case having been allowed.
Messrs. McDonald, Hopkins, Hood Hardy and Mr. Martin S. Goldberg, for appellant.
Messrs. Green Schiavoni, for appellees.
Defendants contend that the petitions do not state a cause of action at common law; that there is presented an instance of a union member seeking a monetary award from the union to which he belongs and from its duly elected representatives, without alleging that he has exhausted the remedies provided by the constitution and bylaws of the union; and that a state court has no jurisdiction to award a judgment against a union or its representatives for money damages resulting from loss of employment caused by union activity proscribed as an unfair labor practice by the National Labor Relations Act.
Plaintiff is not attempting to secure any redress for loss of rights as a member of the union. He is not seeking reinstatement. He is not asking for equitable relief. He is alleging that the union to which he belonged and certain named officials thereof committed a common-law tort against him by conspiring to deprive him of his right to earn a living and interfering with his contract of employment with the William B. Pollock Company, for which he asks money judgments.
To require the plaintiff to first exhaust his remedies provided by the constitution and bylaws of the defendant union, as contended by defendants, by appealing to the union, the one alleged to have committed the tort, to determine a monetary award for such tort, would be requiring a vain thing, especially since it has not been pleaded or established that the union has internal remedies available to plaintiff.
Neither is this court in accord with defendants' second contention that the state court is without jurisdiction to award judgments against them in the instant causes. The National Labor Relations Act does not give the National Labor Relations Board such exclusive jurisdiction over the subject matter of an action to recover damages for a common-law tort, which is also an unfair labor practice proscribed by the act, as to preclude an appropriate state court from exercising jurisdiction. The federal act does not expressly or by implication deprive the plaintiff of his common-law right of action in tort for damages. International Union, United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, v. Russell, 356 U.S. ___, 2 L. Ed. (2d), 1030, 78 S. Ct., 932, and International Association of Machinists v. Gonzales, 356 U.S. ___, 2 L. Ed. (2d), 1018, 78 S. Ct., 923.
The trial court was in error in dismissing the petitions for want of jurisdiction.
Judgments reversed and causes remanded.
WEYGANDT, C.J., ZIMMERMAN, STEWART, TAFT, MATTHIAS, BELL and HERBERT, JJ., concur.