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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 44 > Issue 4 (1946)

 

Abstract

Action by petitioning employer against officers and members of defendant union to recover treble damages under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and to obtain injunctive relief. Petitioner was a trucking concern carrying freight under a contract with the A&P Company. Defendant union called a strike of all the truckers of the A&P Company in Philadelphia for the purpose of enforcing a closed shop. Violence occurred during the strike, with a union man being killed. A member of the petitioner partnership was tried for the homicide and acquitted. The A&P Company and the union eventually entered into a closed shop agreement, and all of the contractor truckers except petitioner either joined the union or made closed shop agreements with it, The union refused to negotiate with petitioner and declined to admit any of its employees to membership. Then the A&P Company, at the instigation of the union, cancelled its contract with petitioner, and because of the union's refusal ,to negotiate with petitioner and to accept petitioner's employees as members, the petitioner was unable to obtain any further hauling contracts in Philadelphia. Held, it is not a violation of the Sherman Act for laborers in combination to refuse to work. They are free to sell or not sell their labor without fear of the Anti-Trust Laws. Petitioner's argument that defendant in exercising these rights falls within the condemnation of the Sherman Act, because the defendant's action against it was motivated by personal antagonism arising out of the killing of a union man and because it resulted in driving petitioner out of business in the area, is rejected, because the act manifested no purpose to make any kind of refusal to accept personal employment a violation of the Anti-Trust laws. Hunt v. Crumboch, (U.S. 1945) 65 S.Ct. 1545.

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