Solo Cup Co. v. International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite & Paper Mill Workers

Sybkrt, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. We are confronted in this case with the question, novel in Maryland, whether or not the State courts have jurisdiction to entertain a common law tort action for damages for injuries sustained as the result of violence in a labor dispute. The appellant, Solo Cup Company, a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Chicago, Illinois, engages in interstate commerce and has a manufacturing plant in Baltimore County, Maryland. Two of the appellees are the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers, AFL-CIO, a labor union with one of its offices in Baltimore City, and Local 845, International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers, AFL-CIO, a Baltimore local of the international union; and the two individual appellees are representatives of the international and the local unions respectively.

On January 12, 1962, Local 845 was certified as the official bargaining representative of certain of the appellant’s employees. The appellees state in their brief that the appellant was reluctant to meet with them to discuss a collective bargaining agreement, and that for this reason the International Union filed charges with the Baltimore office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) on October 30, 1962, alleging that Solo Cup had violated section 8(a)(5) and (1) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act), and that after a hearing the Board found that Solo had violated the Act by refusing to bargain with the Union in good faith. The Local called a strike of its members employed by Solo Cup on November 1, 1962. On December 13, 1962, Solo Cup filed charges with the NLRB in Baltimore alleging that the appellees were engaged in unfair labor practices under sec. 8 of the NLRA.

On April 16, 1963, after hearing, the NLRB found that the appellees were engaged in unfair labor practices and issued a cease and desist order. ¹⁴⁶ Solo Cup filed a common law tort action for damages in the Superior Court of Baltimore City against the appellees on October 22, 1963, alleging substantially the same acts of the appellees and their agents which were the basis for the NLRB’s cease and desist order of April 16, 1963. The alleged tortious acts complained of in the declaration may be summarized as direct threats to employees; damage of appellant’s property; damage of homes and other property of appellant’s employees, including slashing of tires and convertible tops, putting sugar in gas tanks and throwing paint on automobiles; and the “shooting up” of the homes and automobiles of certain of appellant’s employees by the use of firearms. According to the appellant, these acts occurred during the period beginning at about the commencement of the strike, November 1, 1962, and ending about December 4, 1962, and were engaged in to injure the appellant’s business and to coerce employees of the appellant into joining the strike. The appellant alleged that it paid for the physical damages caused by the above mentioned acts.

The declaration claims damages for the physical injuries as well as for economic injury to the appellant’s business. The appellees filed a special plea to the jurisdiction of the court below, claiming that by reason of the National Labor Relations Act and the Taft-Hartley Act the jurisdiction of a state court in an action such as this is precluded under the theory of federal preemption of the field. The court sustained the plea to the jurisdiction and rendered a judgment for costs against Solo Cup, which then entered this appeal. The narrow question presented is whether a Maryland court has jurisdiction to entertain a common law tort action where certain of the allegedly tortious acts have previously been found by the NLRB to be unfair labor practices under sec. 8 of the National Labor Relations Act.

We believe that in the light of certain recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court the question must be answered in the affirmative. Although each side cites many cases to support its position, we believe that four cases are determinative of the question. The other cases cited by appellees, such as Garner v. Teamsters Local No. 776, 346 U. S. 485 (1953), deal either with the question of a State’s jurisdiction to grant an injunction in situ ¹⁴⁷ ations similar to the one before us or with breaches of contract. Therefore we do not believe them to be in point here.

The most significant case for present purposes is United Workers v. Laburnum Corp., 347 U. S. 656 (1954), in which the employer had brought a common law tort action against the union in a Virginia state court to recover both compensatory and punitive damages. The question decided there seems to have been basically the same as the one before us, i.e. (p. 657): “* * * whether the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, has given the National Labor Relations Board such exclusive jurisdiction over the subject matter of a common-law tort action for damages as to preclude an appropriate state court from hearing and determining its issues where such conduct constitutes an unfair labor practice under that Act.” The Supreme Court answered this question in the negative under the facts of the case before it. The conduct complained of involved the intimidation of officers and employees of the corporation and threats of violence to them which caused substantial work stoppages.

The employer was seeking damages primarily for loss of profits. It does not appear that any actual physical damages were involved. The following language from the opinion (pp. 663-664) shows the basis for that decision (and for ours here): “* * * Congress has neither provided nor suggested any substitute for the traditional state court procedure for collecting damages for injuries caused by tortious